<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Dumb as a Dog by cleighc</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29161782">Dumb as a Dog</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleighc/pseuds/cleighc'>cleighc</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Blood and Gore, Conspiracy, F/M, Haruno Sakura-centric, Mental Instability, Minor Character Death, POV Haruno Sakura, POV Hatake Kakashi, Strong Haruno Sakura, Training</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:41:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>32,481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29161782</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleighc/pseuds/cleighc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsunade turned Sakura down when she went to ask for an apprenticeship, and life only gets harder from there. Sakura struggles to learn how to survive on her own without an instructor. Kakashi gradually comes to fill the role, but it takes time for him to escape the guilt of Sasuke's betrayal.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Haruno Sakura &amp; Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>141</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>477</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Strong BAMF Sakura</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Whine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“A dog is a pitiful thing, depending wholly on companionship, and utterly lost except in packs or by the side of his master. Leave him alone, and he does not know what to do except bark and howl and trot about till sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep.”</p><p>-H.P. Lovecraft</p><hr/><p>The look the older woman gave her was judgmental and full of derision.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Her response was blunt and callous in its apathy. Sakura flinched and felt her fists tighten, her fingernails, carefully manicured right before the invasion and only now beginning to grow a bit too long, digging carelessly into the soft skin of her palms. She dug them in just a bit more forcefully, hoping to dissuade the tears that threatened to fill her eyes from the sting of rejection.</p><p>It took a good minute to reign control over her emotions, a long and awkwardly silent minute made worse by the older woman’s widening sneer.</p><p>“Understood,” Sakura stated quietly, offering her new Hokage a short bow. She was about to scurry from the room, but something stopped her. Something ugly and pathetic in its desperation, that demanded she keep pushing. She barely managed the few syllables, prompted by her Inner. “Kakashi-sensei?”</p><p>The obviously irritated woman crossed her arms under her sizable bust, and shot the quivering girl an unimpressed look. “He is on an ANBU mission and won’t be expected in the village for several weeks.”</p><p>Sakura barely stopped from flinching again as thoughts started to compress- <em>they all abandoned her, she’s so fucking pathetic, annoying, so alone, how was she supposed to survive, she was going to die die die</em>- and forced herself to take a deep breath. Another nod, an awkward bow, and she fled, hoping to put some distance between her and her humiliation.</p><p>It didn’t last. She wandered the streets of Konoha in a daze, clutching her arms to her torso too tightly, trying to forcibly feel less broken. But the thoughts crept into the cracks and crevices in her psyche. Remembering her last interactions with her team- her acknowledgment more of an afterthought, if it was there at all, because she <em>wasn’t worth it</em>.</p><p>She desperately needed some semblance of comfort, some stability, and ended up pacing through Konohagakure’s expansive cemetery. It took less than a few minutes of shuffling through wet grass, the moisture clinging uncomfortably to her exposed toes, before she found her parent’s graves. She knelt before the freshly carved stones, and tried to talk about her day, just as she had for as long as she could remember. Needing someone to help assuage the insecurities threatening to swallow her whole.</p><p>But there was no physically affection tou-san to give her bear hugs when she was struggling with disappointment. There was no carefully prepared tea and a chaste kiss on the forehead from ka-san when she was struggling not to cry. Sakura barely noticed the warmth of shed tears on her hands as she leaned forward on her knees and struggled to voice her rejection in words they could understand. But she couldn’t stop the breakdown as her cries turned to distressed sobs.</p><p>Because the reality is that she has no one left.</p><p>Sakura stayed out there for hours, until the chill of the evening air settled uncomfortably into her locked, aching joints. Her body stiff from lack of movement, her eyes itchy and sore from excessive crying, she hobbled up and out of the cemetery in silence. Feeling empty and somehow used.</p><p>Loneliness is a difficult pill to swallow.</p><p>Homelessness is almost as bad. Her house had been soundly destroyed by the recent invasion, and she didn’t really have the financial resources to secure decent lodging. For now, she had taken to camping out on the top of the Hokage monument; camping in the woods was familiar, and preferable to the potential for more rejection. The climb made her muscles burn shamefully, pleasing the angry, masochistic part of her subtly growing underneath her attempts to stay collected. Sakura tried to calm the rumblings of her stomach as she began her climb that evening, lamenting her lack of funds. Muscles straining, she began to plot, trying to take her mind off the hollowness in her stomach and in her chest. By the time she got to the top, she had identified several courses of action she needed, and felt almost optimistic about the next day.</p><p>Make enough money to secure food and lodging, which would require a visit to the Mission Assignment Desk in the morning to see what might be possible to do on her own.</p><p>Get stronger. Her attempts to find an instructor had not proven fruitful today, but she could keep looking. She had already taken to studying more avidly, reading up on everything she could get her hands on that a paper ninja might succeed at (Medical ninjutsu, poisons, genjutsu, Fūinjutsu). But by now she knew that reading was not nearly enough, having narrowly lived through attacks by A and S ranked shinobi alike. She needed a way to practice, alone if need be.</p><p>Throwing projectiles were probably her best bet there, and she made a note to visit a consignment store for ninja gear and equipment, after she had secured a disposable income.</p><p>Bathing was her next order of business. Sakura was not above visiting the public bath houses, although that would be one more additional charge. She internally wrestled with the issue for a moment, before she decided that it would be worth it, particularly if she wanted to look presentable at the Assignment Desk.</p><p>Lying on top of her sleeping bag, Sakura breathed slowly in and out as she looked at the stars. She noted the way the humidity in the air made the skin of her shoulders and calves stick to the outside of her bedroll. She listened to the many insects making noise around her, and wondered how many would crawl on her while she was sleeping.  She pointedly did not think about how hunger gnawed at her stomach, or how deeply she felt loss at that moment, figuring that she couldn’t drown in the emotion if she pretended that she had never been submerged in the first place.</p><p>She drifted off trying to breathe.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Kneel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness.”</p><p>― Charles M. Schulz, You Don't Look 35, Charlie Brown!</p><hr/><p> “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>The memory of Kurenai-san’s soft refusal threatened to burn.</p><p>The quietly regretful woman hadn’t even looked surprised, as if she was expecting the request. And the speed at which she shot down her proposal somehow made the rejection all the more painful.</p><p>As if rejection was only natural, somehow. Automatic.</p><p>Sakura tried desperately to bury the hurt feelings, absentmindedly wiping at the sweat that threatened to drip into her eyes, forgetting that her hands were covered in soil. She grimaced as she felt the crumbling earth smear across her forehead, but otherwise ignored the sensation as she pulled out a particularly stubborn weed.</p><p>Her body was exhausted, and overheated from working during the hottest part of the day, and her pitiable excuse for stamina was already pushed to the limit. Unbeknownst to her, she had already been volunteered for the village’s rebuilding efforts that were still in place months after the invasion, as she was no longer officially registered in a team. This work didn’t provide any commission, so any missions she accepted would have to be completed after her reconstruction shift was over. She was lucky to find a D-rank mission she was able to complete solo that didn't require her attendance until the afternoon; the assignment put her in charge of gardening the plot inside the district of retired shinobi (an extremely small and elusive community that received very little social interaction from the rest of the village- most shinobi retired out of necessity because of some extreme physical or mental debilitation, which led to a high suicide rate. Others were old enough that they no longer had any family or peers left alive).</p><p>Sakura thought when she registered that the work wouldn’t be too difficult, remembering her attempts at gardening with Team 7. But they gave her an entire plot to manage alone, after she had already been shingling houses for the better part of ten hours, and it was honestly difficult to move.</p><p>She pushed through the pain of her aching muscles, more desperate than determined. She had spent the last of her money that morning, so if she wanted food or a chance to bath, completing this mission was very necessary. Sakura also found it easiest to suppress emotional distress when her body was active and aching. The litany of sins and faults her subconscious tried to drown her in was harder to hear.</p><p>Eventually she found crouching difficult, so she sacrificed the condition of her red dress as she knelt on the dusty, loose soil. Hours were spent tending to the plants, weeding and watering, and despite her fatigue she couldn’t quite stop her perfectionist habits from ensuring that everything was neat, orderly, and appropriately maintained. Ignoring the state of her clothes and several broken nails, Sakura was proud of her work.</p><p>The old, wrinkled woman who had given her the assignment appeared behind her without a sound, and Sakura couldn’t stop the urge to flinch as she twirled to meet the sound of cackling.</p><p>“Not bad, girl, not bad. Certainly better than the last genin team I hired, bunch of lazy good-for-nothings.” The woman gave her a once over through her wizened brow, leaning casually on a carved, wooden staff, and then asked, “Are you this fastidious cleaning inside a house as well?”</p><p>Sakura carefully nodded. Her mother had long prepared her for how to maintain a home, well aware that her dreams as a preteen were to marry and have kids. Her own slightly OCD tendencies guaranteed that she completed the tasks meticulously.</p><p>The old woman nodded as if she could hear Sakura’s internal dialogue. “You’re welcome to come back tomorrow. As long as you’ve bathed.” The woman’s nose wrinkled unpleasantly, further scrunching up her already gnarled features. “I don’t want any of that sweat or dirt trailed inside, you hear?”</p><p>Sakura nodded again, still silent from exhaustion, and the woman gave her an odd look. “You’re not very chatty are you?” But then she didn’t give Sakura a chance to respond, nodding to herself and stating, “This just might work out. I prefer the quiet ones.” With little aplomb the old woman handed over a handful of bills, and vanished into the late afternoon.</p><p>Sakura couldn’t stop her heart from dropping when she realized how little she was getting paid, and tried to remember what she received completing these missions with her team. Even less, she realized, but it hadn’t really been a concern at the time. It was enough to splurge on sweets and the occasional dress, which was enough to fulfill her superficial needs.</p><p>Sakura’s eyes burned as she walked out of the field. Why was securing things as simple as shelter and food so <em>difficult</em>? She reluctantly set aside the money she would need to get bathed twice- once right now, and once after her shift tomorrow. Then she reevaluated the state of her dress, and the tears began to fall in thick trails down her cheeks when she saw the long gashes separating the dirty hem of her qipao.</p><p>She had just ruined her favorite dress. The only dress she had left over from her parents.</p><p>It was one thing too many, and Sakura had an absurdly difficult time breathing for several minutes. She wasn’t even sobbing- something painful and tight had constricted her throat, and she just couldn’t get enough air.</p><p>She forcibly breathed, taking long, exaggerated breaths.</p><p><em>In</em>.</p><p>Out.</p><p><em>In</em>.</p><p>Out.</p><p>It took several minutes to calm down. <em>Way too long</em>, a part of her condemned the moment of weakness. Filled with shame and sorrow, and desperate to seem productive Sakura plodded towards the consignment store taking shuddering breaths, carefully ignoring everyone she passed. They seemed just as adamant to ignore her distress, so it worked. Arriving at the store, she immediately headed for the clearance section hoping to pick out random articles of clothing she could change into after her bath.</p><p>The bin was filled with a random assortment of black, black mesh, and dark green. Sakura snatched eagerly at the only spot of red she could see, and deflated upon realizing it was just a sash. She grabbed the slice of cloth anyway, her hold on the fabric almost painful as she sorted through the rest of the fabrics.</p><p>How strange it is, Inner internally commented, that the most popular colors in the clearance section were the colors most likely to help a shinobi blend into their environment and keep them alive? Sakura hummed at the observation, well aware by now that most shinobi preferred vivid colors. Only the skilled could really get away with it, which made it a fad as consumers connected vibrant colors with strength. She grabbed a pair of small, black fingerless gloves buried at the bottom of the bin, instantly reminded of her sensei. She forced away any bitter feelings, grasping the gloves as tightly as the sash, and made quick work of grabbing other random pieces.</p><p>She looked up to see that bandages were half off, and grabbed several packages of those as well. Her acerbic feelings about Sasuke and his ill treatment of her were somehow easier to bury in the deeper levels of her subconscious. Practice, her Inner commented bitterly.</p><p>The woman behind the counter gave Sakura a judgmental once-over, narrowed eyes lingering on her damaged clothes, muddy forehead, and tear-streaked cheeks. Sakura blithely ignored the woman.</p><p>And then tried not to panic when she realized that it cost just about all of her remaining money. Breathing heavily through the stress, she headed to the public bath house and attempted to distract herself by enjoying the feel of the water, almost hot enough to scald the skin. It burned pleasantly, the bite, in a cleansing sort of way. She had only been soaking in the water for several minutes when she noticed that there was another kunoichi in the corner of the bath, that scary women that proctored part of the Chūnin exams. Sakura carefully made the decision to ignore her, stepping lightly in the opposite direction, using civilians to block her line of vision.</p><p>It was not to be. The woman easily picked out the movement of her pink hair, and swam towards her confidently, paying little attention to how her exposed, well-developed upper chest bounced slightly in the water. “Hey! You’re that pipsqueak that had the gall to ask the Hokage for an apprenticeship!” She announced it loudly and with clear amusement, as if thoroughly enjoying the gossip.</p><p>Sakura didn’t respond, and was somewhat surprised to hear that her prideful Inner was similarly subdued. The humiliation hung heavy in the air around her.</p><p>The woman completely ignored any social predicate that respected personal boundaries, coming right up to her face and giving her a stark, appraising look. “I certainly can’t blame her for turning you down. You look weak.”</p><p>Something about that statement had Sakura glaring at the woman. Resentment, maybe, but the older woman just laughed in her face.</p><p>“Aw, is the wittle bitty Genin mad?” The woman’s countenance dramatically changed in the next moment, her cutting sarcasm replaced by something painfully mean and spiteful. “You have no one to blame but yourself, you know.”</p><p>Sakura left, not knowing how to handle the intense woman, or the way her words made her feel. She wandered over to the Ichiraku ramen booth, needing something warm and familiar and comforting, and spent the last of her money on a bowl with extra protein. Screw her diet, she needed sustenance or she would starve.</p><p>Not that there was any real point to dieting anymore.</p><p>Swallowing that painful thought, Sakura ate her food as quickly as possible and made her way to her temporary refuge, unsteady legs shaking as she pushed herself up the small mountain. She had just settled into her sleeping bag as it started to rain, and Sakura lay there for several moments just feeling the moisture gradually soak all of her belongings.</p><p>Ruthlessly ripping the rest of her too long nails off with her teeth, Sakura fell asleep crying in sorrow and resentment.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Breathe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sakura finds a place to live.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Questers of the truth, that’s who dogs are; seekers after the invisible scent of another being’s authentic core.”</p><p>― Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson</p>
<hr/><p>“My apologies, Haruno-san. I am too busy with missions to consider teaching anybody at this time.”</p><p>Ebisu-san used one finger to push his glasses further up the bridge of his nose as he gave her an assessing look. Waiting to see how she will react to the dismissal.</p><p>Better, Sakura found, knowing that his reasoning was not rooted in her own deficiencies. Even if he was merely being polite. “I understand,” she stated solemnly, and she did. The list of casualties from the recent invasion was not as bad as it could be, but she knew that the village was still severely short-handed.</p><p>He gave her an inquiring look that lingered in unexpected places at her response. The corners of her eyes, her new dark ensemble, her carefully bandaged fingers (she woke this morning and noticed they were cracked and bleeding from gardening for hours without gloves).</p><p>“Until next time,” he stated dispassionately after he had finished his calculating perusal, and then he disappeared with a hand wave.</p><p>Sakura took a deep breath and released it. And she tried to focus on the positives. She managed to nab two easy missions in the morning; cleaning that old woman’s home and walking some civilian’s dogs. She also mustered the courage to ask about affordable housing, and was allotted some time during her morning shift to meet a real-estate agent. The apartment she eventually settled on (in reality, the only one she can afford) was an old, crumbling shinobi complex with peeling white walls, extremely small rooms, and no electricity. The aged heating and cooking appliances were gas run, and noisy, but they worked. They worked, and there is a roof over her head, and it is hers.</p><p>As she walked home, Sakura's thoughts drifted to her earlier exchange with the real-estate agent.</p><p>
  <em>“We are actually in one of the oldest buildings still left in the village, which somehow avoided taking any damage during the last two shinobi wars! So you’ll be literally living in history!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The annoying civilian women, wearing too much make-up and impractical heels that did little to add to her femininity, announced this cheerily as if it somehow added character to the senescent building. Sakura did her best to tune out the painfully fake enthusiasm, and admitted to her current financial situation.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The woman’s head tilted thoughtfully, and it was surprisingly difficult to tell what she was thinking. “I see. Your parent’s land was likely sold to the council in the aftermath of the attack, which is common when there are mass casualties, and if you weren’t around to collect the sum it has probably already been distributed. But special accommodations are made following disasters that discourage evictions or requiring cash deposits to begin renting. As long as you continue to be an active shinobi who regularly participates in missions, you should be fine for the time being.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sakura had nodded, trying not to feel resentful about the fact that the village had essentially stolen her parent’s property, and had left to collect her belongings from on top of the monument.</em>
</p><p>Sakura sighed loudly as she arrived to the complex, walking up the many stairs to her empty apartment with a smile. She spent the money she had saved to visit the public baths today on shampoo, and spent at least thirty minutes luxuriating in her apartment’s dinky shower as soon as she was able, inhaling the light floral scent that permeated the small space as her muscles relaxed from the heat of the water.</p><p>She took her time walking back over to the retiree’s community, running her fingers through her short hair as she walked so it would air dry faster.</p><p>The old woman ushered her in through a thick wooden door when she arrived later to clean, thoughtfully nodding when she took note of the new attire. “This is much more appropriate for a kunoichi,” the old woman croaked in approval.</p><p>Sakura’s smile in response was strained as she tried not to be offended. Her mother’s taste in clothing was exquisite, thank you very much.</p><p>“This way,” the woman intoned ambiguously as she lead Sakura throughout the house. She couldn’t help but look around in curiosity. One entire wall along the back of the house was lined in filled bookshelves, containing thousands of books and scrolls. Various weapons were placed at different places in the room, hung on the walls or positioned by doors. Another wall was full of photographs in different colored frames, some quite aged.</p><p>Sakura listened carefully as the woman delivered very specific instruction for what should be cleaned and how, and what should not be touched. She then spent the next two and a half hours in silence as she cleaned the house, while trying not to take too active an interest in the décor.</p><p>The old woman obviously noticed her attempt to be circumspect, and gave the girl an approving nod, just as she bustled into the kitchen. Sakura heard a cacophony of sound, pans banging and glass clinking, and can’t stop the huff of amusement as she wondered what exactly the old woman was about.</p><p>The robes the retired kunoichi wore are traditional and dark. Preference or mourning, she couldn’t tell. The sandals are well-fitted, probably a force of habit from her active enrollment. Her hair, a light grey intermixed with white, is neatly pulled back into a low bun at the base of her neck. She seemed a hale old lady, truth be told, her posture strong and her breathing clear, it a bit eccentric.</p><p>The woman in question interrupted her thoughts to invite her to a meal. Sakura accepted with little aplomb, not expecting the invitation but internally grateful that she would not have to spend any additional money. The food in question was an assortment of traditional rice and fish dishes, and while it was certainly not the tastiest thing she had ever eaten, it was warm and free, which added its own kind of appeal. The old woman introduced herself as Kata-san, and otherwise said very little as she shared the meal, deposited the money in Sakura’s palm, and pushed her towards the door.</p><p>Inner wondered how someone so quiet could have such a loud personality.</p><p>Walking the many dogs was pleasant exercise. The civilian man who had ordered the mission was careful to explain dog behavior (as he understood it) and told her it was necessary to make the dogs walk behind her so they intuitively understood that she was the alpha. Sakura nodded, feeling bemused, and led the dogs on a run, jogging around the civilian neighborhood with the many leashed dogs running behind her. She stopped as she reached the main road, ready to turn back, when she saw a shot of familiar blonde hair.</p><p>Ino looked at her dispassionately from across the street. Looked her up and down, and Sakura was suddenly embarrassed and ashamed of her broken fingernails, the drips of tar on her forearms she hadn’t managed to wash off, the dust in her toes, and the unfashionable outfit she’s put together out of necessity. She tried to shake the undercurrent of anxiety that lingered in her fingertips and pulled at her chest. Ino’s sharp eyes saw it all, and then she clearly dismissed the girl, walking in the opposite direction.</p><p>Without even a mouthy comment to let her know she cared.</p><p>It was easy to ignore the signs of Ino’s own fatigue, the stress around her eyes and the tightly clenched fists, in wake of her own turmoil. This dismissal, this rejection, was somehow one of the worst she had experienced so far. They had been friends since childhood. Ino was Sakura’s savior, and confidante, and role-model. Sakura knew that she had created a divide when she insisted on turning that friendship into a rivalry, but… she wanted Ino to acknowledge her for something that mattered. Finally see her as an equal, instead of little baby Sakura forever trailing behind. It appears the wedge she hammered into their connection was too big to break now.</p><p>It was a loss Sakura wasn’t quite prepared to handle, and the rest of the day passed in a depressed blur. She put aside money she would need towards rent, and then went to visit the market in hopes of finding food. She ended up with several cups of instant ramen and a large knit blanket someone was selling for a pittance. The day ended with her on her bedroll in a sort of blanket nest, staring blankly at the wall, as she realized she was too tired to train or read her scrolls.</p><p>She didn’t realize when she fell asleep.</p>
<hr/><p>Ino stared blankly into the darkness of her unlit bedroom. She blinked. She breathed. Then she wondered how it was possible for her to still be awake when she could <em>literally</em> <em>feel</em> the exhaustion weighing down her limbs and making her eyeballs itchy and dry. Closing her eyes helped with the sting, but eventually boredom and frustration encouraged her to open them again.</p><p>She <em>wanted</em> to sleep, she did. Every time she tried, however, she jolted awake in less than an hour with dreams horrific enough to make her shake with anxiety. And then, body thrumming with wasted energy, she could do nothing but stare at the shadowed off-white paint as her chest ached and her thoughts sprinted. </p><p>She would never be able to will away the image of her close cousin being carelessly dismembered by a wind jutsu, thrown by a rogue Suna-nin just after Suna officially surrendered. She was not even sure she <em>wanted</em> to forget... after all, how else was Ino expected to honor his memory? But it was difficult to come to terms with how somber her household had become following the invasion, all stilted conversation and lingering dead air. Her small attempts at levity were buried beneath the heavy blanket of grief and the terrible reality of an unprotected village and the inevitability of a coming economic recession. Eventually Ino stopped trying, realizing that as an adult, her parents no longer had the burden of protecting her innocence.</p><p>She was no longer a child. She could cope by herself.</p><p>Ino longed for the comfort of familiarity, some gesture of security, and looked for it in Team 10, hoping she could ground herself and adjust accordingly. She was startled to find that everything had changed there too, now that Shikamaru had secured a promotion and was elected to serve in more advanced missions. The lazy Nara still occasionally attended team meetings and training sessions, but Ino and Choji were largely regulated to reconstruction efforts, building and painting fences, digging wells, and replacing windows. They rarely worked together, and when they did it was surrounded by the same dead silence that haunted her family's dining room table. Choji himself seemed okay, but it was the general ambience of digging through rubble and recovering lost, ruined possessions and the occasional shredded body. Nothing but loss and a solemn melancholy that threatened to linger.</p><p>Ino hated it. She didn't want to acknowledge the change. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was <em>before</em>. Before the invasion, before the exams... just before.</p><p>So when Ino spotted Sakura across the street earlier that afternoon, there really was only one recourse available.</p><p>She did not at all look like the same Sakura. Her clothing was dark and perfunctory- frumpy, shabby, cheap, wrinkled, unstylish... Sakura's fingernails, typically long and flawless (one of Ino's secret envies, as her own nails were too round to be so <em>dainty</em> and <em>pretty</em>) were broken and covered in dirt. Ino, professionally trained to pick out physiological and psychological weaknesses, easily parsed out the obvious fatigue in the girl's body, the puffy eyelids that demonstrated recent tears, and the familiar grief (that terrible, terrible dead air that choked and strangled the surrounding space).</p><p>Ino wanted her old friend desperately. The girl she snuggled with under a kotatsu during the coldest days of winter, the girl that giggled as Ino brushed a little too close behind her petite ears, the girl that would wiggle freshly painted toenails frantically because she believed it would somehow make them dry faster. She wanted to wrap that girl in a hug and squeeze tight, until the familiarity of the warmth of Sakura's body and smell of her shampoo was forever imprinted on her mind.</p><p>This Sakura was not that girl. And Ino left before she was forced to reconcile the change between these two entities within her head. She couldn't handle the thought that her best friend, that sweet little girl, was somehow gone forever. Lost inside this grieving, bitter, struggling shell.</p><p>And now Ino lay in her bed, desperately trying not to think about how terribly desperate Sakura's expression had been earlier that day, desperately trying not to think about her own cowardice.</p><p>The first tear was a struggle, the next three a resentful capitulation, and then the torrent that followed an abdication.</p><p>Ino cried until her eyes burned, until her pillow was saturated with tears, until even the steady rhythm of her breathing was lost to uneven gasps and stifled cries. And still she did not sleep. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Lick</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Dogs have more love than integrity. They've been true to us, yes, but they haven't been true to themselves.”</p><p>― Clarence Day, This Simian World</p><hr/><p>“No?”</p><p>Genma-san’s rejection was sharp and confused. He stared at her in bemusement from his place at the library desk, holding her recent check-outs as he absentmindedly rolled a senbon over his tongue. “Why would you ask me, anyway? You realize the reason I am here is because I’m too injured for active duty?”</p><p>Sakura shrugged. “Most Jōnin are currently too busy to give me the time of day. I thought you might be able to at least give me some direction.”</p><p>Genma-san breathed in through his nose, and made a big production out of letting out a large sigh. “Kid, these kind of things need to be taken seriously. Agreeing to train a Genin is a commitment, a formal apprenticeship. They become officially responsible for you and your actions, and generally train you over the course of <em>years</em>.”</p><p>Sakura’s head bowed slightly in shame. She hadn’t realized it was something so official, or so… <em>permanent</em>. Nothing seemed permanent these days. “I just don’t want to die,” she admitted quietly into the space between them, her voice barely above a whisper. She fingers curled and her breathing quickened as the familiar tirade of insecurities threatened to pull her under. Again. She turned it off with a lot of effort, eventually resorting to using Inner’s strength.</p><p>The look on Genma-san’s face became strained when he heard it, and he let out another sigh. “Kami, kid. Look, I get it. But your best bet is to wait until things tide over from the invasion, and then ask someone who will compliment your skillset and ambitions.”</p><p>But what if that was too late? What if something else unexpected happened, another invasion, another attack by someone much too strong for her to handle? She didn’t let any of these thoughts out of her head, but the look he gave her made her think that he knew what she was thinking. The older man glanced down and picked through the scrolls, noting her interests.</p><p>He looked back up with a frown. “There’s a med-nin program at the hospital that might be able to take you on. It won’t be an apprenticeship, but it will at least give you the opportunity for real-life application with active feedback.” He let out another sigh. “And for kami’s sake, girl, train your stamina. Speed can make up for a lot, and is your best bet at staying alive.”</p><p>The smile she shot him was wobbly as she gathered her scrolls to her chest. “Thank you Genma-san,” she stated solemnly. He gave her a tired wave as she made her way out of the library.</p><p>Sakura headed straight over to the hospital after dropping off her books, and was surprised when her application was immediately accepted. “There are too many injured from the invasion. We need all the help we can get,” they explained with fatigued eyes as they led her through the hospital and gave her a description of her duties. She was told that she would be mostly responsible for assisting doctors and nurses, fetching needed supplies and what not. Sakura was feeling mostly optimistic about it, even if she inherently understood that she would not get the opportunity to be taught medical chakra in any significant capacity for a long while.</p><p>In reality, her hospital experience turned out to be rather horrifying. She started by assisting in the burn unit. Mostly civilians who had been exposed to fire inside the wreckage of their homes while the chaos of the invasion raged outside. In addition to fetching supplies, she was shown how to change bandages and sanitize serious burns. She spent hours trying to block out the sound of screams as she did her best to wrap the cloth lightly, startling as she realized even the high doses of pain relievers weren’t equipped to handle this kind of pain. It was worse trying to help children smaller than herself, as their tiny bodies writhed, and they couldn’t stop crying.</p><p>Their eyes all reflected desperation and fear, amidst the pain.</p><p>It made some sympathetic part of her brain panic. Sakura’s stomach rolled unpleasantly from the smell, and her fingers clenched as she gave them a strained smile. She despaired at the thought that she had to dig for her sense of compassion, too overwhelmed by horror, and wondered if this was truly her calling.</p><p>She was eventually abruptly confronted by a harried doctor, who asked why the hell she wasn’t using chakra to numb the nerves and alleviate his patient’s pain. That was the whole purpose of this stupid enterprising med-nin program, after all, to compliment more traditional care. Sakura tried to explain that she had never been officially trained to use medical chakra, and the man impatiently condemned her for being useless and shooed her out of the unit.</p><p>Trying to blink through tears, forcing them not to fall, Sakura was transferred to a different section of the hospital.</p><p>She eventually found herself in a kind of triage unit, where she was now responsible for mopping up large swathes of blood off the floor from recent, impromptu operations. The area was wide and open enough Sakura could see shinobi being wheeled in, some screaming shrilly and others deathly quiet.</p><p>“Over here girl!” Sakura was prompted by a tall nurse who appeared obviously irritated and overworked. The woman looked her up and down in a quick, sneering assessment, before gesturing towards a bleeding shinobi lying on a makeshift hospital bed. “It’s too late to save this one. You need to wait until he passes, and then we want you to move his body to the basement, return, and clean the gurney.”</p><p>Sakura could only nod as she stared wide-eyed at the gasping shinobi in front of her. She drew nearer after several moments out of morbid curiosity. His hand grabbed the front of her clothing out of reflex, and brought her even closer. Sakura could only put her hand over his, attempting to offer some semblance of comfort, as she took in the burns on the man’s lips that seemed to eat away at the pink skin of his cheek, the constant gurgles as he attempted to make noise, his bulging eyes and terrible breath odor. Then he started to convulse, his eyes flying into the back of his head as his bleeding body contorted unnaturally, a pained whine from the back of his throat quickly evolving into a high pitched scream.</p><p>It took a good 20 minutes for the man to die a terribly painful death. 20 minutes where Sakura was forced to watch the man scream in pain, the pupil’s in his brown eyes blown wide in fear, his hand still desperately clinging to the front of her shirt jacket. 20 minutes of uncontrollable seizures intermixed with desperate sobs.</p><p>When he finally passed, Sakura felt numb. She barely noticed wheeling the gurney to the bottom of the hospital, still clenching the man’s cooling hand. She barely remembered dropping the body off, watching dispassionately at this lifeless shell of a human being was essentially plucked off the bed and thrown carelessly in a large freezer. Barely noticed as she cleaned the gurney, fairly covering herself with blood in the process.</p><p>She went home after that. Settled into her nest of blankets, mindless of the man’s blood no doubt staining the fabric. Or maybe she did realize, and she just didn’t care.</p><p>She fell asleep feeling and thinking nothing at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Right. So, super quick. Does anyone think I need to add any additional tags to the story? All of my works are rather dark and handle death pretty intimately, and it can be difficult for me to realize if I need to do more to warn potential readers. Please let me know!</p><p>Thank you for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Bite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sakura accepts a mission out of the village.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart,</p><p>But at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion.”</p><p>― Charlyn Khater</p><hr/><p>“Of course Sakura-chan!”</p><p>Lee-san’s loud affirmation warmed something in Sakura’s heart after experiencing so much rejection, and his cheer was a welcome distraction from the callous exhaustion infecting the hospital and spoiling her shifts. This was the first morning that she had not been assigned a construction shift, a solid month after she had started to help rebuild from the invasion, and Sakura was eager to follow Genma-san’s advice to improve her stamina. She couldn’t think of anyone better to train with her than Lee-san.</p><p>“Thank you so much!”</p><p>“No problem! I’m sure Gai-sensei would be happy to let such a beautiful flower join our training session this morning!”</p><p>A snippet of doubt and worry began to swim in her mind at that assertion, as she realized that instead of agreeing to train together, he had agreed to let her join a session with his sensei. It seemed somehow wrong to intrude; they were a team, one she wasn’t a part of, so her inclusion felt grossly inappropriate. Perhaps shadowing one of their training sessions wouldn’t be so bad if it was just this once, though, and she could determine what exercises to use for herself in the future?</p><p>Maito Gai was extremely receptive to her intrusion, which helped to ease some of her doubt. After Lee-san made her intentions known, the heavily muscled man shot her a thumbs up and a winning smile, proclaiming, “Ah! This is indeed the springtime of youth! Working together with Kakashi’s precious student to build strength and perseverance is a worthy endeavor!”</p><p>Ignoring the painful, shameful twinge that shot down her body from being called Kakashi’s student, Sakura began stretching. She gradually came to realize that the man only spoke in exclamations, just as he began to lead them on a run around the village. It was at a much faster pace than Sakura had ever run before, and she had a difficult time catching up, relying on her growing sense of spite and fear of embarrassment to push her forward.</p><p>Gai-san was clearly more than comfortable with the pace, and was determined to maintain idle chit-chat. He seemed to be very curious about her motivation. “What has driven you to seek my dear student out this beautiful morning?”</p><p>Sakura did her best to respond, as even breathing was difficult. “I need to get stronger.”</p><p>“Why though?”</p><p>Sakura considered that as she ran. Her immediate response was wrapped in her fear of death. She didn’t want to die. More than that though? She wanted to be worth something. She wanted someone to find value in her, to respect and admire her ability to contribute. “I want to be worthy of my team,” she eventually settled on, uncomfortably aware that she was the odd man out in that situation, obviously outmatched in a way that made her question her placement in Team 7 to begin with.</p><p>She tried not to consider that her inclusion was an afterthought, that she was a token kunoichi prepped and ready to be sacrificed to further Naruto and Sasuke’s careers. Kakashi-sensei’s behavior certainly forwarded the idea, as he never really gave her any personal attention or training, and the fear and resentment that filled her body at that realization caused a burst of anxious energy that pushed her forward just a bit faster.</p><p>The two brightly cheerful shinobi beside her celebrated the push, just as Gai-sensei praised her response. “That is a worthy and noble reason, and I would be honored to help you pursue your ambitions!”</p><p>Sakura could barely nod in response, all of her available energy concentrated on maintaining her current pace while not tripping.</p><p>She was so obviously outperformed compared to them both that it was embarrassing. She had to stop after three laps, her muscles cramping in pain and her lungs screaming. Both men had complimented her perseverance sincerely, and left to run 97 more laps, and Sakura couldn’t stop herself from huffing in self-deprecation.</p><p>She was so pathetic. Inner vehemently agreed.</p><p>Their musings were interrupted by a shinobi runner, who told her that she had been elected to join a team and fulfill a mission, and that her presence was required immediately at the Shinobi Assignment Desk. Jumping up with a strained grimace as her muscles violently protested, Sakura made her way there as quickly as possible, a nauseous brand of anticipation bubbling up in her stomach.</p><p>When she finally arrived, she stopped abruptly in the doorway, surprised to see who she would be teaming with.</p><p>“Well, look who the cat dragged in. It’s Forehead Girl, looking as ugly as always,” Sakura’s childhood bully Ami taunted from in front of the desk, accompanied by another civilian-born student she recognized from the Academy. Their team leader was a tall brunette man who wore a Chūnin vest and was otherwise unfamiliar.</p><p>“Haruno Sakura,” the Jōnin behind the desk announced her name and gave the purple-haired girl a hard look. Sakura shuffled closer to the trio. “You will be accompanying Kogure Ami and Sawa Yoshi on a C-ranked mission led by Shimomura Takayuki. Your mission objection can be found in the mission scroll. Your departure time is in one hour,” the older woman spouted out the information mechanically.</p><p>Their team leader nodded woodenly and wasted little time shuffling them out of the building. “Has anyone here been on a mission out of the village before?” he asked them lightly, although his grip around the mission scroll was tight enough that Sakura could see the veins popping on his white knuckles. That was not a good sign.</p><p>“Yes,” Sakura stated, just as the other two students replied to the negative. His glance at her was cursory and dismissive, tension still lining the skin around his eyes and his stiff stance. Surely, she wasn’t the only one to notice? Sakura glanced at her new teammates, a resentful Ami that completely ignored her gaze and a quiet boy that appeared too nervous to focus on any one thing, and a pool of dread began to fill her middle.</p><p>“Pack lightly. This is a simple delivery mission to Akada and back, which shouldn’t take any longer than two weeks as long as we pace ourselves appropriately. Bring weapons and supplies at your own discretion. I will meet you at the village gates in one hour,” the man’s tone was still mild, which belied the tension in his limbs and eyes. He left almost immediately, taking off over the Konoha roofs in the opposite direction.</p><p>Sakura turned back over to her new teammates, already missing Sasuke’s astute observations and Naruto’s strange intuition. “Am I the only one to notice how on edge our new sensei is?” she asked them quietly.</p><p>The look Ami sent her was disdainful. “Of course he is on edge, our village was recently attacked by Suna-nin and we’re heading close to the border of the Land of Wind.”</p><p>Sakura glanced at the scornful teenager in consideration. On the surface, sure, that explanation made sense. But Sakura was under the impression that Konoha currently had no strife towards Suna, that the two villages had called a temporary truce as Sunagakure attempted to secure a new future leader. What reason would they have to thoughtlessly antagonize the village? And Otogakure was in the opposite direction… “I’m not sure that is it.”</p><p>Both of her teammates shrugged her off and left to get ready. Paranoid that this would turn into another mission like the one in Wave, Sakura collected her pack from her apartment and ran as fast as she could towards the consignment shop, fear helping her ignore the painful, aching muscles.</p><p>She bought as much as she dared- every last bit of coin that wasn’t necessary for rent. She invested in protein bars, instant ramen, a couple of military rations pills, exploding tags, smoke bombs, extra kunai, and a couple pieces of clothing that could replace her current ensemble. Then she spotted something metal and rusty at the bottom of weapon’s clearance bin, and plucked out something she was only able to recognize because she was a bookworm who had spent most of her childhood reading dusty library books.</p><p>Tekkō-kagi, a hidden weapon made up of three, long thin blades that was attached to a strap of cloth made to wrap around her wrist and palm. This was a weapon that had largely fallen out of favor since the Warring States Period, so Sakura was more than a little surprised to see a version of the contraption here. The condition of the blades was poor, and would require a lot of intervention to even be useable, but… Sakura liked the idea of having a hidden weapon on her, and grabbed an appropriately long, black cloth pouch she could attach to her leg.</p><p>Despite her attempt to rush her shopping trip, Sakura ended up at the gates several minutes late, and received judgmental looks from her new teammates, and a disdainful reference to Kakashi from her new team leader. It made Sakura’s ear burn with shame and resentment as they began the journey.</p><p>The pace was rough, considering her aching muscles, but she was still fairing better than either of her civilian-born peers. They made their way with minimal noise; Ami was loudly shushed by their team leader every time she attempted to make a smart comment, and her attempts gradually petered off. They eventually settled under tree cover for the night as soon as the sun fully set. Dinner was a protein bar, which everyone munched awkwardly together. Then Sakura volunteered first watch as Yoshi-san volunteered to set traps.</p><p>The night was long and restless. Sakura sat diligently through her shift, attempting to peer into the dark for any sign of intruders, and willfully trying to ignore her jumpy, overbearing team leader, who insisted on overseeing her watch. Then Sakura attempted to condition her new weapon after her shift had ended, feeling too anxious to sleep. She began by rubbing the metal with a piece of super-fine steel wool that was included in her weapon maintenance kit. It helped reduce flaking, although the color of the metal was still tarnished. Then she attempted to sharpen the ends of blades, the sound of the whetstone quietly filling the space between her and a strangely jittery Ami.</p><p>Almost none of them slept at all that night. Sakura blamed the Chūnin for giving off jittery, anxious energy as he consistently shot apprehensive looks into the surrounding forest. Holding his weapon in front of him for hours, as if expecting an ambush. Her teammates were finally picking up on his trepidation, and started to exhibit their own signs of anxiety. Ami bit into nails as she hunched closer to the ground, and Yoshi barely breathed as his restless fingers fidgeted around polished shuriken.</p><p>Sakura eventually resorted to asking the man what he expected was coming after them, but his grimace simply hardened as he ignored her.</p><p>The next two nights passed similarly, and on the fourth day of their trip they were all nearly dead on their feet. It was on this day, late in the evening, that whatever attack Shimomura Takayuki had been anticipating finally happened.</p><p>Their assailants were dressed completely in black with matching, nondescript white masks, but swung weapons common to bandits. Their movements were light and flexible, yet they made a point to stomp readily into the moist soil surrounding them. Sakura noticed the discrepancies even as she evaded the swing of a club, and ducked underneath an old masakari battle axe. She released a well-placed kunai with an exploding tag. It should have embedded into the man’s neck, had he been an actual bandit, but instead it dug into the tree behind him and exploded, burning half of the man’s arm and face.</p><p>But there was no scream. Not even a whimper of pain.</p><p>Sakura’s stomach dropped as she realized these individuals had extensive shinobi training and were actively hiding their identity. There were only a few reasons why someone might want to attack a group as inexperienced as theirs. Culling the numbers was a common war tactic in the last war by Iwa-nin, but they were a long ways away from the Land of Earth, were not currently at war, and no one from that village had been involved in Konoha’s recent conflict.</p><p>Sabotage, Inner whispered savagely from the back of her mind.</p><p>Yoshi’s ragged screaming interrupted her train of thought, and Sakura turned towards the boy only to see a tall, shadowy figure hacking away carelessly at the boy’s arms, Yoshi-san’s arm guards crumbling like paper beneath the brutish assault. After a few well-placed hits his left limb separated completely from his body, causing a spurt of blood and another high-pitched scream, and Sakura utilized that anticipated moment to invade the man’s space and slice neatly under his chin with a kunai. Blood from the severed carotid artery spurt out on top of her, drenching her hair and her outfit, but Sakura ignored the sensation as she untied her red sash from around her waist and wrapped the makeshift tourniquet around Yoshi’s arm several inches above the cut. She had seconds to knot it before another swing of a club was made at her head.</p><p>Sakura swore as she resisted blocking with her kunai, knowing that the small, short knife was not incredibly effective against their large, blunt weapons. She quickly spotted their team leader desperately attempting to fend two offenders off with a tanto. Another two seconds was sacrificed pinpointing Ami, who was attempted to engage an individual with water ninjutsu. Sakura dodged again and tried to come up with a plan.</p><p>Protecting her fallen teammate was the most important thing, Kakashi’s nindō ringing in her ears. And she did her best to evade shots and respond with crisp, if textbook taijutsu moves, trying to create some distance between Yoshi and herself with the assailant. She was surprised the short figure engaging her was so… lackadaisical. The attacks were exaggerated and almost lazy in their execution, although the perfect blocks and dodges demonstrated their skill.</p><p>They were committed to maintain this charade, the only reason she was still alive. Was there some way to take advantage?</p><p>Two more assailants joined the one she was fending off, and she was easily overwhelmed, unable to follow through and plot a retaliation. It started with a missed block that ended with a club slamming into her shoulder, and then another stumble led to an ax driving into the meaty part of her upper arm. Sakura bit off the scream, trying to stay on top of the attacks, but it was clear they were toying with her. Another swing hacked into her forearm, and a hard, wooden staff dug heavily into the meaty part of her thigh.</p><p>She did her best to hold her position through involuntary winces of pain, biting ruthlessly down on her lip to prevent any noise from leaving. And they appeared to grow impatient at her obstinacy.</p><p>One fast, well placed kick dug into her side and threw her into a tree at the other end of the clearing, and Sakura watched with wide eyes as one of the figures bludgeoned the now exposed Yoshi to death, driving the club into his skull until the bone caved in and there was brain matter splattered everywhere. Sakura felt panic and guilt quickly fill her body, just as Ami’s screams lit up the quickly approaching night. Turning, Sakura could only watch with wide eyes as the girl’s body went up in flames. Sakura scrambled to her feet and ran to aid her former classmate, but was pulled back by the scuff of her neck and slammed harshly into the tree behind her again.</p><p>Sakura shakily got to her feet, trying to blink away the dizziness, blood impairing the vision in one of her eyes. She was just able to make out one last, well-placed water jutsu that put the fire out, but by then the girl’s skin was blistered charcoal, the dark material of her clothes melting into the burnt flesh. Ami wouldn’t stop screaming for several long seconds, and then suddenly she was still.</p><p>The black, masked figures suddenly filled Sakura’s vision. It was her turn now.</p><p>Terror took control of Sakura’s limbs, and reflexively she flung kunai with exploding tags and smoke bombs at random into the assailants surrounding her, as quickly as she could. One seemed to hit home, catching on the loose black material of their clothing. The resulting explosion was close enough to rattle Sakura’s teeth, and one of the individuals cursed loud enough for her to hear. But as the smoke cleared it was obvious they were all still standing, and Sakura could have cried in frustration.</p><p>This time their approach was methodical, purposeful, as they stepped closer. Sakura was sure she was going to die, even as she frantically tried fishing for more tags from her pocket. She found one of the military ration pills instead, and gulped it down almost as an afterthought. Vigor swam through her body, reenergizing her, but properly assessing the skill of the approaching assaulters Sakura knew it was useless. They were about to attack, and tension was gathering in Sakura’s limbs as adrenaline rushed-</p><p>And then her team leader’s voice filled the space, his mild manner replaced by something angry and desperate and terrified. “Danzō’s ill deeds will not be forgotten! I am just one person who was investigating the missing children, the Sannin’s willful ignorance, the machinations involving the Uchiha massacre… I am not the last, getting rid of me solves nothing. And using these children as plausible collateral is just pathetic!”</p><p>The attention of her assailants turned briefly towards the Chūnin, and something feral in Sakura lit up within her newly energized body. The dejection, resentment, anger, and fear from the last few months that had steadily built up under the surface broke through, and Inner’s battle cry was a furious scream. It demanded blood. It demanded justice. It demanded strength, and Sakura did her best to deliver.</p><p>Sakura slipped around the masked-nin, and drew her hidden weapon with a thrust filled with chakra. The shinobi was clearly not expecting the long reach of the bladed weapon, and paid for it with a bloody partial decapitation. Sakura wasted no time dropping a smoke bomb and tackling his comrade, very little of her shinobi training shining through. This was not an attack with any finesse. It was a retaliation led purely by instinct, a savage, desperate, terrified onslaught where Sakura was barely aware of how forcefully the blades thrashed into the flesh in front of her. And Sakura didn’t stop clawing until she reached the dirt underneath, digging careless through sinew, muscle, and bone.</p><p>Sakura tried to take a breath as she observed the still carcass underneath her, but choked, adrenaline and cortisol tensing everything.</p><p>She almost lost her head as the third shinobi attacked through the smoke, but Inner screamed and jolted their body to the side. Sakura wheeled around to see the tall figure approaching quickly and with obvious agitation. She barely dodged the next attack, and then fear prompted her to fuel chakra into her next punch and in her feet as she threw herself wildly into her enemy. The masked figure blocked the hit, but clearly underestimated the strength of her strike, as it was strong enough to knock the individual off their feet. Frenzied and terrified, Sakura followed the enemy to the ground, slamming her fist into their body with little abandon, channeling chakra recklessly into her fingers with each hit. It burned, her fingers scorching as if she was on fire, but she didn’t stop until the man in front of her stopped moving, his chest a bloody, squishy hole.</p><p>Her team leader was still trying to talk through multiple impalements. “The remaining Uchiha will eventually notice. Itachi will notice. All the stolen Sharingan. And Danzō will get his. They’ll tear him… to fucking shreds. The village will know.”</p><p>He couldn’t talk through the decapitation.</p><p>Sakura had spent the time subtly (crudely) planting her remaining exploding tags in the corpses of their comrades in front of her, tears running pathetically down her cheeks from the pain of moving her fingers. She mentally apologized to the man for not doing more to help, but there were two more assailants, and she was still out of her league. She hid her blades, did her best to look like she was dying, and planned her substitution jutsu.</p><p>Coughing out a mouthful of blood and blearily looking forward, she saw them approaching. Sakura almost expected them to see through her rudimentary plan, slapdash rather than brilliant, which would have ended with a blade through her neck. Naruto would have known what to do, some part of her whispered. She waited with trepidation for them lean over to examine the bloody remains… and then she activated the seals, just as her tired, wet fingers barely, sloppily made the necessary sign.</p><p>Poof. She suddenly found herself in a tree, as far away as her chakra could manage, just as the entire clearing exploded.</p><p>She passed out, too tired to do anything but settle herself more securely around the trunk of a large oak tree.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Another quick question. I had originally planned to publish all of these chapters together, in one larger chapter. Do you think that format would work better pace-wise? </p><p>Thank you for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Guard</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It is little use to blame a dog for having fear. A dog has so many braveries that its few fears do not cancel them out.”</p><p>― Eric Knight, Lassie Come-Home</p>
<hr/><p>Sakura came to slowly, tiredly, reluctantly. Her body was in so much pain that it hurt to even blink into consciousness. When recent events caught up to her, however, she startled upwards, anxious to determine if she was still in the tree.</p><p>It was midday, and she was still safely nestled against tree bark. Sakura let out a quick burst of air in relief. She ignored the tears, clinging to the bark miserably, trying to breathe through her pain and consider recent events. Needing to make sense of her recent trauma.</p><p>Certain things were out of her hands- it was very clear that the reason their assailants attacked in the first place was due to some kind of undercover work done by her previous team leader. Sakura recognized the name Danzō from her school textbooks, well aware of his history in the first Shinobi War and his current position in the Council of Elders, and came to the conclusion that this was an inside job within the village investigating possible corruption and other atrocities. Crimes that the third Hokage had apparently endorsed on some level, if Takayuki was to be believed.</p><p>Sakura knew little about the intricacies in village politics, but it made sense that someone was responsible for some of the darker, dirtier work maintaining the village’s power- manipulating the wills of powerful clans, weakening the strength of foreign infrastructure, probably training his own task force…</p><p>It was honestly somewhat terrifying to consider the ramifications (they will want her dead, Inner asserted in panic), so her thoughts abruptly changed course and examined her personal role in this clusterfuck of a mission. And Sakura very quickly came to the conclusion that she and her teammates were simply collateral, as Takayuki claimed. Needed as an excuse to draw the Chūnin from the village, and used as props in order to legitimize the lies about their deaths (ambushed by bandits, clearly). And it was an acceptable loss to the village because they were all unimportant Genin, with no strong ties to a shinobi clan.</p><p>They would not be missed.</p><p>It was a bitter pill to swallow. Looking back, being on Team 7 felt like such an opportunity; the chance to work with such talented individuals, to gain new skills under the careful observation of an instructor. But she had fucking wasted it, pining after a boy that wanted nothing to do with her. Sakura could admit that Kakashi had been a singularly hands-off instructor- but to be fair, she had never approached him requesting new knowledge. She had never asked for additional training, supplementary readings, any kind of resources really.</p><p>Sakura let out a quiet sob, allowing herself this moment of self-pity. To indulge in her misfortune, before she forced herself to consider her recently dead teammates and allow guilt to twist the pit of her stomach. Yoshi’s death was very squarely her fault. It was Sakura’s responsibility to look after her fallen teammate, to ensure that he received necessary medical attention, and she had failed because she wasn’t strong enough.</p><p>The regret and shame cut deeply.</p><p>Ami’s death was equally terrible, and Sakura swore she could still hear the girl screaming in the background, the pitch desperate, ghastly, heartrending.</p><p>Sakura owed it to them and their families to go back and retrieve their bodies.</p><p>Fear had her rooted in place for several more minutes as she considered the likelihood that there were operatives still alive in the area, looking to cut her down when they had the chance. She could admit that it was likely. Highly likely, even. But those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash. For as terrible as she feels now for letting her teammates die, she would feel so much worse if she didn’t at least attempt to give their bodies the rest they deserve.</p><p>Internally committing to the idea, Sakura took quick stock of her body. Her hands were covered in chakra burns, the result of forcibly pushing too much chakra through her pathways. There was a chance that it would heal, but there was also a chance that she had burnt the chakra coils permanently, rendering her completely unable to perform hand signs. Which would signal the end of her kunoichi career.</p><p>She tried to be optimistic. It was hard through tears, but remembering her obligations helped.</p><p>The skin around the cuts on her shoulder and forearm were red and puffy, likely infected from being exposed to the elements. The infection didn’t look too bad, though, and the level of movement restricted from the severed muscle was minimal. Her other arm and thigh were heavily bruised, but that was also something she could work through.</p><p>She should still be able to run, if necessary, which was important.</p><p>Her possible concussion was much more worrisome. She wouldn’t know for certain how severe the effects until she left the tree. She did so carefully, noting the minimal symptoms of vertigo and nausea with relief. Her vision was still slightly blurred, but it was clear enough when she focused. Her swollen left eye played with her depth perception, but… if she ran into Danzō’s men she was dead either way.</p><p>It was not difficult to find her teammates. All she had to do was follow the unpleasant scent of burnt flesh. Sakura entered the clearing as warily as she could, carefully noting nearby trees to see if she could pinpoint a blur of black. But there was nothing, the large area of burnt soil unnaturally quiet. Sakura carefully checked all of the bodies in the clearing, her paranoia demanding that she ensure all of the possibly assailants were completely dead. Surprisingly, Sakura found one masked shinobi, a man by the looks of it, that was still breathing. Thankful for her neurosis, Sakura mechanically slit his throat, trying not to think about the fact that he was likely a leaf-nin as she made her way over to the body of her fallen team leader. Digging through his pack, she uncovered the mission scroll as well as storage seals appropriate for holding dead bodies, and promptly sealed the decapitated Chūnin.</p><p>Her feet gracelessly carried her over to Yoshi, where she untied her attempt at a tourniquet around tears. The red strip of cloth, now stained in blood, was wrapped around her own arm in tribute just before she sealed his body. “Sawa Yoshi,” she spoke into the space in front of her, as if to memorialize the name of his life forever in her memory.</p><p>Then she made her way towards her remaining fallen comrade, only to realize that the girl was still breathing somehow.</p><p>Immediately dropping to the ground beside the girl, the logical part of Sakura’s brain was kicked into high gear. She quickly realized her first order of business was to remove the bodies of her assaulters to dissuade suspicion and move Ami to a more secure, cleaner location. Sealing the enemy-nin took several minutes, and then Sakura was left trying to figure out how to move the severely burnt girl.</p><p>Her careful attempt to wrap the girl’s bandages resulted in a scream. While glad that her teammate was strong enough to let out so much noise, Sakura realized that her best bet was to attempt to numb the nerve endings. Her memories carried back to her first day working at the hospital, and Sakura realized with frustration that she still hadn’t been shown how. But she understood the mechanics, and that would have to work for now.</p><p>Sakura carefully prodded chakra into her fingers. It hurt enough to make Sakura gasp in pain, but just the fact that she could do it was a good sign- her chakra coils were still receptive. Pushing through the sting, she reached out towards Ami’s nerves on the very surface of the blackened epidermis, and mentally envisioned slowly cutting off the nerve receptors with chakra. Something happened. Ami stopped screaming. But there was also a deep purple under the skin that indicated possible internal hemorrhaging, and Sakura panicked, removing her hands.</p><p>Be rational, Inner reminded her. Sakura’s chakra only breached the outer layer of skin, it was highly unlikely that she was responsible for deep, internal hemorrhaging. This points towards a potential prior injury.</p><p>Feeling out of her depth, Sakura picked the girl up as gently as possible, and began to walk from the clearing, heading towards Akada. Perhaps not the safest choice, considering the possibility for follow-up by Danzō’s followers, but their team had made good time, and they were much closer to Akada’s potential emergency services.</p><p>Sakura walked as quickly as she could and for as long as she could, ignoring the growing ache in her arms. And when she dropped to her knees in exhaustion, she forced herself to find a crawlspace under roots that would sufficiently hide them both. She forced her injured, aching fingers to sanitize and wrap Ami’s burns. She pushed through the fatigue to give them both water, trying not to internalize the girls whimpers.</p><p>And then she tried to stay awake, to keep watch against possible assailants. Her recently reinforced fear and paranoia aided with her efforts, pushing anxiety into her physically shaking limbs. But the exhaustion proved too much to handle, and she blacked out.</p><p>The next morning, Sakura changed the bandages again, noting the way the purple bruises under Ami’s abdomen had spread with concern. She attempted to use chakra to give her an idea of the extent of the damage, having nothing but her memory of medical ninjutsu scrolls to guide her. And she managed to replicate the result of the scrolls fairly well. Her attempt to manage the damage was harder, not only because she was so overcome with fatigue and pain, but because she having a difficult time pinpointing the cause. She found damage in multiple organs, and did not feel equipped to try to heal them all at once, especially with zero actual healing experience.</p><p>But that was okay. They were less than a day’s walk away from Akada, and Sakura was feeling optimistic.</p><p>Help was coming.</p><p>She should have known better. Barely three hours in Ami had difficulty breathing. A careful perusal demonstrated worsening hemorrhages, and then her teammate started to seize, and Sakura knew she would never make it to the village in time. She had no choice but to attempt to heal her.</p><p>Forcing chakra past her fingers made her cry through tears from the agony, but she forced it into the girl’s abdomen anyway. She tried to direct her chakra to piece flesh together, to mend… Sakura could feel it working. Inelegantly, certainly, but functionally the damage in the organs was mitigated. But it wasn’t enough, Sakura didn’t know enough, and it took little time for the charred girl to pass away.</p><p>Shock bound her body and emptied her mind. Or perhaps it was grief. All Sakura really understood is that the world was empty.</p><p>She sat there long enough for the ground under her folded legs to cool, long enough for the corpse beside her to grow stiff. It was difficult to rationalize things such as possible assailants when the numbness threatened to swallow her whole.</p><p>Gradually pain began to creep in between the cracks of her apathy. Sakura startled when the warmth of her falling tears landed on her bloody, sensitive fingers. Looking down she let herself whisper, “Kogure Ami,” into the space in front of her, just as she broke down.</p><p>The sobs that followed were barely human. The grieved, pained, frightful screeches escaped through gasping tears, echoing her frustration and agitation throughout the surrounding woods. She wasn’t even particularly close to the girl beside her- they had never been friends. They had never experienced the simple pleasure of a shared meal. Never giggled with each other about boys, or comforted the other with too-tight hugs, or shared whispered secrets under toasty blankets.</p><p>Perhaps it was selfish of her, but Sakura was crying for herself. She cried in regret for the way events had played out. She screamed in frustration from the pain in her body, the futility of her recent struggles, the disappointment she had in her own actions. And she was so <em>angry</em>- angry for being cornered and assaulted. Angry for being cast away and discarded. Angry for being so fucking useless…</p><p>It took time to calm down, hours possibly, and even longer to seal Ami’s body in the scroll beside her. Then she dug out the mission scroll, and quickly scanned the contents through bleary eyes.</p><p>The mission was ridiculous in its simplicity. A letter was attached to the scroll, and the address for its receiver was printed above. Sakura let out a hollow laugh as she considered it- reduced to delivering mail. It was obviously a dud mission; the daimyo employed professional couriers to transport mail between villages, and anything politically sensitive was delivered through animal summons.</p><p>Sakura stood up, her tired body barely standing as she headed towards Akada. She would finish this fucking mission, and return home. Inner echoed the strength of her conviction, and they both reveled angrily in the pain in her fingers as her fists tightened.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Heel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.</p><p>– Emily Dickinson</p><hr/><p>Sakura stood in front of her Hokage, exhausted and impatiently waiting for the woman to say something so she could go home. Go home and shower the dried blood off, go home and eat enough food to stop the nauseating hunger pains, go home and curl up into a shaking ball on the floor…</p><p>But the older woman maintained her consternated gaze on her and refused to speak. So, Sakura forced herself to fill that gap, listing unnecessary details aloud- everything that the Hokage would have access to once she finished her mission report.</p><p>“The bodies of my teammates have been dropped off with the Analysis Team at the Konohagakure Intelligence Division, and their families have been notified about the circumstances surrounding their death,” Sakura detailed her last hour in a stilted tone, trying desperately not to break down again. Her reception at the Konohagakure Intelligence Division had been… trying. Heavy stares and discretionary whispers had followed her, both in and out of the building, and Sakura found that she did not at all care for the attention.</p><p>She approached the older woman’s desk and dropped off a slip of paper. “This is a note confirming that the package listed in the mission scroll was appropriately delivered in Akada.”</p><p>The Hokage’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “A delivery mission?”</p><p>Sakura didn’t hesitate to give the woman the mission scroll, still stained with blood and dried tears.</p><p>The Sannin snatched it from her hands, gave the paper a quick look-over, and then shot her a long look. “I never ordered this mission.”</p><p>Sakura did her best not to respond. She hardly knew how. She had been given plenty of opportunity to divulge to the Hokage her concerns about the mission, and her speculations concerning Danzo’s involvement, but not knowing the woman’s affiliation, kept the information to herself.</p><p>“Was there anything unusual about this mission? Perhaps something strange you noticed about your attackers?”</p><p>Sakura did her best to keep her expression placid as she considered the leading questions. This probably meant the Hokage had some inkling as to the nature of this mission, and the person responsible. But that insight gave Sakura little direction towards how to appropriately react; the Hokage could be asking in order to uncover if actions needed to be taken to mitigate Danzo’s mess, Sakura’s impending death akin to neatly sweeping dirt under the rug. Or she could be asking because she was in on Takayuki’s investigation, or at least aware of Danzo’s sticky fingers.</p><p>Sakura decided to play it safe, recounting her observations without including her team leader’s loud assertions, and neglecting to offer the storage seal she carried that contained the bodies of her assailants. “They were dressed uniformly and moved as if they had received shinobi training. Yet they made a point to carry large, blunt weapons and attack with sloppy movements.”</p><p>Tsunade’s gaze was sharp as she considered Sakura and her words. “Your conclusion?”</p><p>“These were unknown shinobi trying to pass themselves off as bandits. They were likely planning to steal our belongings after our deaths to maintain the illusion.”</p><p>“And why would they do that?”</p><p>Sakura met her gaze squarely, feeling frustrated and panicky, and lied through her teeth. “I hardly know. My teammates and I were not exactly important.” Which was exactly the problem.</p><p>The Sannin once again descended into a deliberate and reflective silence, her fingers lacing under her chin. The look in her eyes didn’t change though, still some strange mixture of doubt, suspicion, fatigue, and irritation. Eventually she asked with obvious consternation, “How in the world did you survive?”</p><p>Sakura just looked down at her fingers, bruised, cut, and lined with angry red chakra burns, and quietly stated, “I don’t know.” It was starting to catch up with her. The lethargy, the pain, the guilt. It was oppressive enough to easily quell Inner’s indignant squawk at the Hokage’s obvious lack of faith, and strong enough to make her legs and arms physically tremble.</p><p>She tried to pull herself physically together, drawing her limbs together awkwardly, hoping to ward off a rising sense of hysteria. Based on the Hokage’s expression, her lack of control was painfully obvious though. The blonde’s gaze had actually softened into something almost resembling compassion. It was only then that Sakura realized she was silently crying.</p><p>“Have the hospital attend to your injuries. We can continue this discussion some other time,” Tsunade stated with a resigned sense of fatigue.</p><p>Sakura bowed awkwardly, feeling broken, and scurried towards the hospital.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Roll Over</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things--unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog...”</p><p>― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms</p><hr/><p>Sakura had been required to watch as the names of her dead teammates were added to the Memorial Stone. There were few people that attended the service- just a small group of bereaved family members and a stone-faced Jōnin. The whole affair felt somehow empty. The world was too quiet, the colors around her somehow muted in grey. Inner whispered in the corner of her mind that adding names to a piece of rock as compensation for their loss of life seemed contrived, but Sakura barely heard her.</p><p>Her world was numb. There was no room for tears, around the odd chilliness that had taken root in her chest. There was no room for anger or guilt. Just a blanket heaviness that filled her head like a fog and weighted her limbs until even walking was difficult.</p><p>Her apparently vacant expression wasn’t doing her any favors. Ami’s mother had approached her during the ceremony, and unleashed her grief about the situation out on Sakura. Her anger at Konoha’s current political situation, which had prompted the Academy to promote Genin in numbers that hadn’t been seen since the last Shinobi War (even if they weren’t ready). Her despair at the common neglect experienced by civilian-born students, and the carelessness with which the village treated their lives.</p><p>“She was fucking collateral! Just another body to fill the space. Nobody but me saw her as something precious!”</p><p>And then the accusations became more personal.</p><p>“Why are you alive? You’re hardly better than her. Why weren’t you the one to die?”</p><p>Her cheeks warmed. Sakura didn't know why. She felt too hollow to sense things like anger or shame. Too hollow to feel tears.</p><p>The detachment persisted for days. It made her feel like a puppet whose strings had been snapped. She felt the weight of her body pulling her towards the ground, with nothing to keep her afloat. Sakura wasn’t too worried about the feeling, though.</p><p>It made it easy to ignore the way things were worsening around her.</p><p>News of her team’s fate had spread, and with it, more judgment than Sakura ever could have anticipated. There seemed to be some kind of collective agreement in Konoha that the death of her teammates was somehow her fault, whether because she had callously sacrificed them to save herself or because her general ineptitude led to their downfall. What began as light shunning had turned into whispered condemnations, usually with the moniker ‘Team-Killer’.</p><p>Something as simple as going to the market for groceries often included derogatory comments if not outright harassment, and it was difficult to find stalls willing to sell their meat and produce. Random people hissed disparagingly at her as she passed on the street. Sakura had just enough self-awareness to appreciate the temporary refuge apathy delivered her, because otherwise…</p><p>Otherwise what?</p><p>It took a few days to find out. The disassociation left, and the first feeling to sweep the course of her small body was anger.</p><p>Sakura spent that day at the training field, working herself as hard as she knew how. Standard strength training was pushed with weights and repetition. This eventually devolved into sprinting around the training ground, as she attempted to work through the aggression, and the ever-familiar pulse of anxiety riding underneath. As the sun set, Sakura found herself punching a tree, trying to ignore the jangle of the chakra-binding bracelets secured around her wrists. She hit the tree until her knuckles were bruised and bleeding, until the pain was able to drive out how overwhelmed she felt at that moment, the anger and fear eating away her insides. Until the pain was obvious enough that she felt adequately punished.</p><p>It was only right.</p><p>Inner fought that assessment. Told her survivor’s guilt was stupid. She just got lucky because she was over-prepared for the mission, but that didn’t make it somehow unacceptable to still be alive.</p><p>Sakura ignored the words, frustrated at the fact that extending herself so far physically hadn’t helped anything. She wandered, still embroiled in her discontent and taking masochistic pleasure from her aching muscles, and wound up back at the Memorial Stone. And it all came back to her in a rush. And before she knew it, Sakura was screaming.</p><p>The frustrated, angry, aggrieved shrieks echoed painfully in the empty clearing, and gradually became coherent with time, enough to make out words and then sentences.</p><p>“Why is this my fault? What did I do wrong? Kami knows I tried my best to keep them alive. So why-” Sakura eventually broke down again as Inner played Devil’s Advocate. Sure, Sakura had tried while they were being attacked, but before then? Had she asked her teammates to strategize together, to form a gameplan in the event that they were ambushed? Discussed strengths or weaknesses, so they could operate better as a cohort?</p><p>She hadn’t.</p><p>Regret filled her, and following anger was grief.</p><p>Sakura spent that night crying on the cold, stone steps surrounding the Memorial. There were periods of sleepy lulls in between the anguish that allowed for Sakura to talk to the stone as she had her parent’s gravesites, listing anything of note happening in her life. It took her very little time to realize she was rather miserable, though, which encouraged reticence. She eventually fell asleep there, her eyes swollen and red, her body shaking from the cold. She barely noticed a piece of cloth draped over her, simply accepting the warmth that eased the tension in her limbs.</p><p>She woke up in the early hours the next morning, clutching a blanket to her chest. It smelled like Kakashi, and the thought made her cry even more. Still, she grasped it to her chest with no small amount of desperation, and toddled her stiff body back to her apartment, feeling exhausted.</p><hr/><p>Kakashi was stretched out against the back of the Memorial Stone, using the light of the rapidly setting sun to peer at his weathered copy of Icha Icha. Through the pages of his book, he watched the brilliant colors of yellow and orange settle into shades of magenta and violet with a familiar sense of complacent melancholy.</p><p>There was peace. In the beauty of the moment, the comfort of memorized dialogue, and the familiarity of his grief.</p><p>It held his attention, despite the way his mind usually wandered rereading the worn book for the thousandth time. It allowed him to breathe.</p><p>The moment was broken by an angry, agonized scream. The distress and desperation in the tone encouraged him to shift up into a crouch, kunai at the ready, before he even recognized the chakra signature. As it was, upon recognizing it, Kakashi simply slumped back against the stone, shame somehow physically weighing him down.</p><p>If it had been anyone else, he would have left. Shunshin-ed a healthy distance away at the first opportunity. As familiar as he was with his own method of mourning, listening to other people grieve made him extremely uncomfortable. But this was Sakura. His only remaining erstwhile student that he had abandoned at the first opportunity. Who, according to all reports, seemed to experience the same ill-fated luck of every other Team 7 member he knew. He stayed because he felt obligated to share her anguish in some small way, as the masochistic part of his psyche told him that feeling uncomfortable and bitter as she poured her heart out was the least that he could do.</p><p>It was only right, considering the way he left. Without even a note, unable to handle the emotional confrontation. If only Sakura had been privy to the internal conflict where she was concerned, as she was anything but an afterthought, but his utter conviction in his own worthlessness as an instructor and his concern for his slipping mental state overrode his protective instincts.</p><p>But this... he could do this.</p><p>So, he stayed and listened to her scream. He listened to her sob; the whines forced out of her lips better reminiscent of a wounded animal on the verge of death than a teenage girl. He stared listlessly into the quickly darkening sky as she iterated around teary wheezes her own culpability and disgrace from a situation that had so obviously been outside of her control. And Kakashi’s fingered tightened around his book tight enough that pain began to radiate from the digits as she repeated Obito’s <em>fucking nindo</em>, and cried through her apologies to her dead teammates.</p><p>The strength of her committed grief and her muttered assertions made it clear that she had tried <em>so hard</em> to keep her teammates alive. But she had lost them regardless, and been forced to witness their brutal, horrifying deaths. Something in Kakashi’s chest burned at the thought, which forced remembered pain and anxiety into his limbs and head.</p><p>His grip on the book tightened, and looking down Kakashi could see familiar dried blood flaking off the skin of his fingers, clinging to his fingernails.</p><p>No.</p><p>Kakashi dug his feet into the ground and attempted to breathe, determined not to drown in the memories. Determined to stay in the present. He picked an object in the distance at random, and verified where he was. He took a quick stock of his senses; the cold feel of the polished stone beneath him, the slight chill in the air from the approaching night, the sound of rustling leaves as the wind lethargically made its way through the trees. The smell of Sakura’s shampoo, which was still Pakkun’s favorite.</p><p>After several minutes he felt the panic leave, and he could breathe again. His fingernails were once again clean and meticulously clipped. He continued to listen with half a heart, resisting the urge to curl up into himself, as if to bodily protect himself from her words.</p><p>Gradually, the torrent of tears petered out, and the girl began to narrate her current situation, sharing with her dead teammates in an eerily familiar manner. Kakashi expected it to be mostly pedestrian, like what was described in her Academy profile. Something about her two loving, supportive parents or her friends.</p><p>If only.</p><p>Instead, he had to listen to her admit that her parents were dead. That she had somehow lost her house, could barely afford the apartment she was renting, and she often couldn’t afford food. She detailed how hard it was to find missions that paid enough, how discriminatory and cruel the people in the village were acting towards her, and how unsafe she felt in the village. She talked about how difficult it was for her to handle all of these emotions; apparently, she had been disassociating, and the anxiety was bad enough to interfere with her sleep.</p><p>Obito’s fucking eye wouldn’t stop leaking. Kakashi tried to ignore the slight congestion in his nose from the tears, consumed as he was in feeling guilty. Realistically, the man understood that some of her issues were entirely outside of his control. But it was definitely within the role of a sensei to secure resources, facilitate training and missions, and help young shinobi handle the emotional trauma of an event like this, particularly a first kill and the first death of a comrade in battle.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck.</p><p>It became harder and harder to just sit there. Every part of his damaged psyche was telling him to leave, as emotions threatened to swallow him. It hurt so fucking much, and it was his fault, and he couldn’t handle it. Best to find a distraction, and work through the feelings slowly, allowing him the opportunity to numb himself so it wouldn’t be so goddamn painful.</p><p>But he owed it to her to stay until the end. It was the least he could do (the only thing he could do).</p><p>Thankfully, she stopped talking shortly after that, and her shaky, emotional commentary was replaced by quiet, depressed tears. Still draining to hear, but it was harder to take the blame for, so he was thankful.</p><p>It took another hour for her to fall asleep. Intimately familiar with her light snores from the time Team 7 had spent outside of the village, Kakashi shot up, blithely ignoring the ache in his joints from the hours of discomfort on the cold ground. He wasted little time rounding the stone, and stared at his former student.</p><p>She was filthy, covered in sweat, blood, and dirty bandages. Too skinny by half, the kind you see on the starving and anorexic, those who are malnourished and suffering as a result. Her hands were carelessly abused, bruised and bleeding despite the bandages, fingernails broken, and Kakashi noted the chakra restraint bracelets with concern. Her clothing was far darker than her usual ensemble, cheap, and served to wash out what little color she had in her skin.</p><p>He stepped closer. Noted the way that the injuries on her arms must have reopened, as the tight bandages blossomed darkly and the smell of fresh blood permeated the air. Noted the exhaustion on her face, the bruised purple bags under her eyes, the lines of stress furrowing her large forehead. Noted the way she was shaking with the cold of the night, huddled into a fetal position on the cold stone as if to instinctively conserve body heat.</p><p>He retrieved a blanket from his pack almost mechanically, unable to consider something more intrusive (such as picking her up and delivering her home). He laid it out on top of her and watched as her arms and legs relaxed, and the furrow disappeared.</p><p>A tiny sliver of the pain in his chest lessened.</p><p>Kakashi left.</p><p>It was too much.</p><p>Best to find another ANBU mission, and leave the village for awhile. Maybe (if he was lucky, although all prior experience had demonstrated that he wasn’t), maybe things would be resolved in his absence. One of his sorry peers would take pity on the girl and begin to apprentice her in his stead. Honestly, that would be better for the girl. As his recent experience attempting to mentor Sasuke had demonstrated, he was completely ill-suited for teaching.</p><p>He wouldn't be able to keep her alive.</p><p>But perhaps he could help, even the tiniest bit, at the Mission desk? Possibly try to secure her involvement in a mission that paid a bit more, so she could at least afford to eat.</p><p>That would be his contribution, he decided, before someone else stepped in.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Sit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sakura plans for the future.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.”</p><p>― Jack London</p><hr/><p>The next few days were hard. Now that Sakura was more cognizant of the abuse, it impacted her mental state more. She felt like she spent much of her time flinching away from people and their persecution. It made Inner angry, to see Sakura take all of this belittlement so passively, but Sakura was still depressed enough to welcome the shaming, as their words seemed to solidify Sakura’s spiraling insecurities (which felt oddly reassuring).</p><p>Because it meant that she was right. All those internal musings she has had over the years obsessing over her deficiencies were right. So this treatment was justified. This was somehow important.</p><p>The kind of missions she was able to accept changed too. Suddenly, instead of walking dogs, painting fences, and finding missing cats she was being asked to remove diseased rat infestations, help coroners transport dead bodies, and on one notable occasion, was used as a test dummy for other Genin attempting to practice Genjutsu. By the end of the session, blood was pouring out of her nose and her head was pounding, but the instructor who had commissioned the mission was self-righteously unsympathetic.</p><p>Still, thank kami Gemna-san seemed normal. When she had timidly approached the library desk carrying as many scrolls as she could carry, he had just given her an inscrutable glance that settled on her many bandages. He let out a puff of air, somehow too forceful to be simply a sigh, and gave her a long look as he began to check out the scrolls.</p><p>He looked through the titles with apparent interest, taking note of the rate at which she was advancing through subjects, and then looked back up at her. "Med-nin training?"</p><p>Sakura stuttered in her attempt to quickly answer. "They won't let me until my hands heal". She pointedly jangled the chakra restraint bracelets to emphasize her point.</p><p>The look he gave her then was nothing short of furious, and Sakura took a step back trying to understand what she had done to make him so angry. “Stamina,” he bit out aggressively enough to make Sakura jump and stand at attention.</p><p>She gave the man a frightened nod, grabbed the scrolls, and scurried home.</p><p>She had needed that. Sakura laid out on her sleeping mat, surrounded by warm blankets and the comforting smell of her old sensei, and sent mental thanks to the Jōnin who had just knocked some sense into her by scaring her a bit, reminding her of the stakes. It wasn’t like her to be so… passive, Inner supplied. She was being fucking passive.</p><p>So Sakura attempted to remedy the situation, grasping onto the first bit of motivation and clarity she had felt in weeks with substantial desperation. Logistics first- how could she become more difficult to kill? She would have to get more serious about training, but how? Her brief stint with Lee-san and his sensei made it more than obvious that they were considerably out of their league. Perhaps she could start with simple weights and regular strength training at first? But would that really be enough?</p><p>Kami, this was so hard to do all by herself. Should she risk asking someone else to help train her?</p><p>A dip in the branch on the tree outside her window made the leaves shiver. Sakura was off like a rocket at the sound, anxiously clutching a kunai as she approached the window.</p><p>There was nothing there. But Sakura couldn’t shake the feeling that something, or rather someone, had been. This was the third time something like this had happen recently, something that gave her the impression that she was being followed. And it was one more reminder that she was not safe in the village, even wrapped up in blankets in her own apartment.</p><p>She should invest in traps. Perhaps Genma-san would point her in the right direction the next time she visited the library.</p><p>It also reminded her about why it might not be a good idea to find an instructor and embroil someone else in her problems. Should Danzō eventually discover what she knew, Sakura knew she was a goner. There was no reason to take someone down with her. She would just have to try to train herself.</p><p>This train of thought also led her to consider whether or not she should risk researching Danzō and his mysterious organization. Having any additional information could prove essential towards more proactively protecting herself. She could better prepare herself, better recognize his agents… but it ran the risk of making it obvious that she knew.</p><p>Sakura ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth it. She already had a difficult time managing the scroll of dead bodies, ensuring that it was always on her person as innocuously as possible. She didn’t think she would be able to hide more secrets, as jumpy as she was.</p><p>You make a shit shinobi, Inner told her bluntly. Sakura knew, and familiar shame flooded her curled body.</p><p>Some part of her wanted to reach out to the remaining Uchiha with the information. Takayuki had outright accused Danzō of stealing the Uchiha dōjutsu, and had inferred that Itachi and Sasuke were largely unaware of said machinations. Sakura was encouraged by part personal responsibility, and part lingering adolescent proclivity towards romanticizing Sasuke, which encouraged her to entertain brief delusions about ‘rescuing Sasuke from his ignorance, and then he could come back and rescue her from the village’s derision’.</p><p>Inner cut off the fantasy before she could embarrass herself. Because aside from having no knowledge about how to get in touch with either missing-nin, Sakura realized that sharing such information would be equivalent of treason. She would be inviting either of them to attack members of her village. Not that Danzō was innocent and undeserving of retribution, it just… didn’t seem her place to instigate that exchange.</p><p>Sakura was too nervous to sleep that night, anxiously clutching her scrolls to her chest as the tension in her chest became painful and breathing became difficult. She pushed on her injured fingers, trying to lose herself to the pain, but the tension always crept back, settling in the muscles of her fidgety limbs.</p><hr/><p>Shinobi No. 4265 glanced through the window again to see that the girl he had been assigned was curled awkwardly in the facsimile of sleep. Settling himself once more at the window, he indulged himself for the moment by trying to logically reason <em>why</em> he was there.</p><p>There was clearly something wrong with the girl. The sound he made landing on the tree was light- it was only a perfectly timed gust of wind that made the tree's leaves shake, and even then she shot towards the panes of glass with a bladed weapon. That degree of vigilance was certainly suspect, considering how young she was. But the entire village was aware that her team was recently ambushed, so this behavior was not necessarily treasonous.</p><p>He stared for another moment, taking in the complete lack of furniture in the girl's abode, just a nest of blankets in the middle of the floor surrounded by tidy piles of books and scrolls and a couple of lit candles. It made something deep inside him... displeased to see everything carelessly laid out on the floor, but the feeling soon flitted away like all of his other ones did. Cool, apathetic calculation replaced it, and he began to notate things for his report; the titles of the books stacked on the wood flooring, the lack of food in the apartment, the lack of any kind of social visits or attempts at social communication. He considered the hours she had spent simply reading. All clear signs of an isolated bookworm without a steady training regime, who was not invested in taking care of herself. Perhaps... a girl unwilling to settle, wanting as little to tie her down as possible if she chose to leave the village?</p><p>Hm. That was something to consider.</p><p>An hour passed, and then two as the girl slept, and his mind wandered a bit as he stared at her sleeping form, carefully monitoring her chakra to be aware of any potential clones.</p><p>He didn't truly understand why Danzō-sama would be interested. She lacked any ability that would make her worthy of his notice, and her habits have not appeared to change in any substantial way that would necessitate suspicion. He wondered how long the man would demand such close surveillance.</p><p>And then he immediately threw these thoughts away. It was not his place to question orders. Shinobi No. 4265 was a tool to be used and discarded for the sake of village, and he would do his best to fulfill his role. Even if it required shadowing an uninteresting teenage girl ad nauseum. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I hope the village's persecution doesn't seem too uncanon? I know the village already has a propensity to gossip, critique, and shun certain shinobi, considering their actions are what largely drove Kakashi's father to commit suicide. I'm not suggesting, of course, that this is at all the same; Sakumo and his mission at the time were of great importance to the village, so they had more invested in him and his supposed failure. But it demonstrated that the villagers have their own opinions about how shinobi should behave, and are not afraid to show their displeasure. </p><p>I do think that word would get around about this little Genin girl who someone survived with minimal injuries even as her teammates were all brutally killed. People would wonder about her, and as flukes so rarely happen in the shinobi world, they would eventually decide that she probably did a runner or some other dishonorable action to save her own skin. Considering leaf's whole gimmick is loving and protecting each other and propagating the 'Will of Fire' (standard collectivism, sacrificing the self for the good of the whole if need be), Sakura would be seen as disloyal, and be disliked as a result.</p><p>Let me know if you agree or disagree?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Fight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”</p><p>― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes</p><hr/><p>Kata-san had been unnaturally quiet as she followed Sakura throughout the house, watching her clean with heavily bandaged fingers. The old kunoichi had taken in everything when she first walked through the door- the bandaged limbs, the anxious tension in her frame, and the chakra restraint bracelets around her wrists. Sakura anticipated questions, and had prepared answers- her chakra burns were extensive and the chakra coils damaged, but it was repairable. She should be fine as long as she gave it an opportunity to heal, so the nurses had outfitted her with special bracelets that restricted the amount of chakra she was able to pump into her hands.</p><p>Sakura hated them. There was a stigma associated with them as they were generally used for criminals, and she found that people in the village were already judgmental. They were also a handicap, and broadcasting her helplessness in a village she no longer considered safe was eating away at her nerves.</p><p>The alternative was that she give up her kunoichi lifestyle, though, so… grin and bear. Even if that grin was accomplished by grinding her teeth.</p><p>But Kata-san had said nothing. For two hours. It was disconcerting.</p><p>When she did finally speak, it was at the end of her mission, as the old woman tried to feed her more homemade dishes. “Bad mission?”</p><p>Sakura could only nod.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>She shrugged. “What happens on most bad missions. We were ambushed.”</p><p>Kata-san gave her a long look. “By shinobi? What affiliation?”</p><p>“None that I could see.”</p><p>The old woman’s eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion. “Interesting.” The woman looked her up and down for the dozenth time, her gaze critical and assessing. “You sustained many injuries.” She stated this truth with no inflection in her voice.</p><p>Despite the fact that it was not phrased at all like a question, Sakura found herself nodding.</p><p>“Where is your team?”</p><p>The question made something in Sakura’s throat harden, and it was suddenly difficult to swallow. “I don’t have one.”</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p>They descended into a long silence. Sakura tried to keep her attention on the still contemplating retired shinobi, but she found her focus naturally shifting towards the doorways and windows, instinctively (apprehensively) evaluating the many points of entry. Just as Sakura was about to stand and announce her departure, Kata-san asked a question in a gruff voice that was oddly muted. “What is your specialty?”</p><p>Technically, Sakura didn’t have one, having received no real training since graduation. But she shared the specialty notated on her file, just to have something to say. “Genjutsu.”</p><p>“I see,” the old woman stated into the empty kitchen, seemingly distracted. “Until next time.”</p><p>Sakura accepted the strange dismissal with some confusion, and made her way out of the house, hurrying to a largely unused training ground situated at the outskirts of the village close to the Uchiha Compound. She ran through her strength training exercises, and jogged for as long as she felt comfortable, trying to push herself even a bit more than yesterday. After feeling her muscles just beginning to ache, she dashed home to shower and prepare for an overnight mission.</p><p>She had been offered the assignment that morning, and Sakura had accepted it, pleasantly surprised to be doing something not involving dead bodies and diseased vermin. The mission scroll itself had regrettably few details aside from the large sum of money promised at the mission’s fulfillment, but considering she was asked to wait outside Training Ground 44 just after sundown, she thought it wise to over prepare. After a small meal, Sakura meticulously packed her weapons, scrolls, and first aid materials, and then made her way through the village.</p><p>She was the first to arrive.</p><p>Sakura decided to use the time productively by alternatively sharpening her weapons and pausing to take periodic deep breaths to control the anxiety. After all, this kind of mission for a Genin was highly unusual; there was a good reason why the location was included as part of the Chūnin exam. There was a good reason why it was considered unlucky and dangerous; the Forest of Death.</p><p>Inner had the temerity to whisper sabotage, and Sakura ruthlessly stomped down on the thought. At the very least, she should evaluate her new, temporary teammates first in order to decide if this was another rigged mission.</p><p>Her heart sank thirty minutes later when two Chūnin appeared at the end of the clearing, looking just as confused as she felt for her inclusion. Their abrupt interrogation as they carefully evaluated her heavily bandaged limbs didn’t help. One boy with a dark blue sash asked, “You are a Genin, yes? Kami, why are you here? Are they really so short-staffed?”</p><p>Sakura just shrugged, having absolutely no power over the kind of missions offered to her. All they told her that morning was that it was a retrieval mission with good pay, and the person commissioning it did not mind her participation.</p><p>But then one of the Chūnin nudged his partner and loudly whispered, “Kurorin, this is that girl. The one from that mission? The team-killer.”</p><p>Sakura tried not to let the hurt show on her face. Why bother whispering if she would still be able to hear them?</p><p>“Ah,” the boy stated, as if her involvement on this mission somehow made sense now. Then he addressed her briskly. “We are here to search for a clan ring that the Hyūga clan heir lost during the Chūnin exam. We are here at night because our sensei thought we needed more experience completing missions in the dark, particularly traveling effectively through underbrush while remaining undetected by wildlife. You are here because our teammate caught an illness and is recovering at home.”</p><p>Sakura could only nod, already feeling overwhelmed.</p><p>“Honestly, there’s not really a lot you can do to help, and your inclusion in this mission is clearly an insult. Just stay there- we’ll go in and get the ring ourselves.”</p><p>Sakura’s eyes narrowed at that. “If I don’t participate, I don’t get paid,” she stated plainly, trying to communicate that she needed whatever funds she could get to stay alive. If was so much harder to find missions now, and people were paying her less. She still managed to have an apartment space, but she found that she was skipping more and more meals in order to afford it. She had taken to collecting coupons and food tokens almost obsessively, as it was often the only means she had to secure a decent quantity of food.</p><p>The look the adolescent boys shot her spoke of their absolute distaste for that answer. “Forgive us,” the boy who whispered her new moniker stated, “We forgot that you care more about money than human life. Even, apparently, your own. By all means, go into the forest, but don’t expect us to watch your back.”</p><p>At that, both boys jumped the fence, and made their way into the foliage with ease, carelessly leaving her behind.</p><p>Sakura gritted her teeth in irritation and ignored the impulse to run after them. She also tried to stop the swirl of negative emotion that had spread at their casual abandonment- <em>she was going to die, she was</em>-. Instead, she forced herself to think and attempt to come up with a strategy. She had little to no tracking skills. No real experience sensing individual chakra. However… something so small would be almost impossible to see in the dark, but perhaps a light source could cause the small piece of metal to reflect and make it more readily visible? And it would make it easier for her to navigate in the dark. Sakura considered her options, and eventually decided to make a small, makeshift torch.</p><p>Regrettably, Sakura had not considered how the bright light of the fire would attract the forest’s inhabitants. Barely several meters in she was attacked by a tiger stalking for prey among the tree branches overhead. It caught her by surprise, the shadowy light of the fire distorting her view of the forest surroundings, and his sharp claws caught a bit on the skin of her jaw and a corner of her shoulder before she could retaliate with a kunai and twist out of his grasp. And rather than continue to fight, Sakura bolted as quickly as she could, weaving in and out of tree roots until she was barely breathing through painful wheezes.</p><p>She eventually skidded to a stop at the edge of a large river, carefully noted the tiger’s absence, and spent a good minute attempting to catch her breath. Still clutching the burning piece of wood, it took her another minute to notice several impossibly large leeches at the edge of the water, trying to make their way up to her. Sakura was ashamed to admit that she let out a girlish scream at the sight, and took off down the river after chucking the torch into the river.</p><p>The fire clearly wasn’t worth the hassle.</p><p>Her primary concern became looking for safety, easily slipping into the uneasy mentality that had dominated her thinking during the second round of the Chūnin Exam. Making her way through the dark as well as she was able, she quickly found some tree roots deep in the ground that would make a nice hollowed space. After quickly verifying that it didn’t have any other residents, she slid into the space with relief.</p><p>In the safety of the quiet earth, Sakura could properly evaluate the claw marks at the edge of her face and shoulder. They were bleeding profusely, but after performing a basic diagnostic medical ninjutsu she was able to determine that the damage was mostly artificial, and as long as she covered the cuts to facilitate clotting and keep out infection, it should be fine. Unfortunately, bandages don’t like to stick to the skin at sharp angles like the jawline, so Sakura found herself wrapping a good portion of the bottom her face just to keep it on. The shoulder was far easier to bandage in comparison, although the tight material pulled at her armpit irritatingly.</p><p>She curiously tried to take a deep breath through the cloth material, and found that it didn’t detrimentally impair her ability to take in air. She had always wondered how Kakashi managed.</p><p>Then Sakura devoted herself to the very important task of mentally berating herself for being so incredibly stupid. When had she become this reckless? Why had she not considered the local fauna? Perhaps, Inner interjected, because they weren’t really a very present part of the Exams. With 26 teams in the forest throwing elemental jutsu around and traveling in groups, most animals probably kept out of the way by instinct. And it didn’t help that at the time of planning Sakura was fairly drowning in negativity…</p><p>Remembering that did not help her current state of mind. After all, Sakura was all alone here, with nothing but her demonstratively terrible instincts to guide her.</p><p>The panic was habitual by this point. The flush of adrenaline in her limbs, the stoppered breath, the racing insecurities.</p><p>No.</p><p><em>No</em>.</p><p>She could do this. She reiterated it again, just so it would seem more true. And even if she didn’t get the ring, the least she could do was gain some practical experience. With that thought, Sakura removed her Tekkō-kagi from the black pouch strapped at her side, and formulated her next move.</p><p>Sakura had no idea where Team 8 had been admitted into the forest, but she did know where everyone had ended up. It therefore made the most sense to go towards the tower at the center of the forest and search there. And if that proved fruitless, she could attempt to find physical signs of Team 8, and put her rudimentary Academy tracking lessons to the test.</p><p>Now she just needed to situate herself. Sakura relished in the ease she felt walking up the tree with chakra, and peered carefully over the top of leaves, looking for the distinct shape of the tower. There it was, due southeast, the light of the moon reflected off the top of the light-colored wooden shingles. She was surprised by how much chillier it was up here, away from the insulation of the trees. Sakura shivered a bit as she descended down the bark.</p><p>The next few hours were spent meticulously treading the forest, practicing how to navigate through trees in the dark, as well as how to most efficiently slaughter the creatures of the forest with the three long blades attached to her wrist. At first traversing the dark foliage sprawling with tree roots, not even a sliver of moonlight visible from the expansive canopy, was trying. She eventually resorted to jumping from branch to branch, better able to detect large tree limbs even with her low visibility. Sakura quickly learned that this mode of travel required dodging and slicing into the frighteningly large centipedes that shot out at her in the dark. By the time she reached the tower, she was covered in small scratches and swatches of wet liquids- it was difficult in the dark to know if it was blood or something grosser.</p><p>Bug juice, Inner commented. Both Sakura’s features twisted in disgust at the thought.</p><p>And then she descended to the ground and began her search.</p><p>She was only interrupted on two occasions.</p><p>In one, a bear lumbered out from behind a tree, and Sakura hid instinctively. It still looked in her direction, and Sakura wondered what gave her away- the fruity scent of her shampoo, or the small sounds she made slowly backing out of the clearing. In any case, it was something to consider and correct later, and Sakura fled the area as quietly as she was capable.</p><p>On the second occasion, she ran into the two Chūnin, still scouring the forest surroundings in the dark. They quickly took note of her bandaged face with obvious derision, and told her to leave before she accidentally killed herself.</p><p>“You clearly don’t know what you’re doing,” the boy asserted to her from several trees over. “Leave now, or you run the risk of killing yourself over a stupid retrieval mission.”</p><p>Sakura ignored them, delighting in the fact that they hadn’t found it yet. Acknowledging that fact somehow made her awkward attempts to navigate through the forest and find the ring less pathetic.</p><p>“Kami, this girl refuses to get a fucking clue. Come on, Kurorin, let’s head out.”</p><p>And once again she was alone, but having successfully killed and evaded potential enemies, she felt a lot more confident in herself.</p><p>Logic led her to investigate areas that had hosted obvious fighting. Unnatural clearings created from elemental jutsu, or damaged foliage from aggressive taijutsu attacks. She used her limited experience tracking marks in attempts to locate Akamaru’s claws, not remembering any other contestant in the exams that had a nin-animal accompanying them. In the few that she found, she assiduously investigated the area. She tried to picture where Hinata would have stood during these exchanges, as Kiba was clearly the aggressor on their team. Closer to the tree line, away from plain sight… slightly protected by protruding roots so that she could use her doujutsu and give her team a better approximation of where all of the enemies were without having to worry about an ambush.</p><p>She noted the lightening of the trees as the sun began to rise with distracted relief, as the additional light increased her field of vision.</p><p>Sakura thought it was a fluke, at first, when she finally spotted the piece of shining metal half buried in rotten leaves. It was a moment of incredible luck, considering how substantial the falling leaves must have been this last autumn. She snapped it up from the forest floor with glee, verified that the symbol for the Hyuuga clan was imprinted in the metal, and indulged in something she hadn’t done for months.</p><p>“Shannaro!” she exclaimed with an enthusiastic punch to the air.</p><p>She excitedly turned to make her way out of the forest. It took substantially less time to fly past the large trees now that she could easily see, but it was a large plot of land, and even after an hour she was still in the training ground. By this time, the lack of sleep had begun to catch up to her, and her energy severely lagged. She took to jumping tree branches again, using chakra in her feet to increase her speed, impatient to leave.</p><p>When she finally broke through the forest, Sakura first attempted to determine her location and the time of day. Due south, and based on the direction of the sun, she would guess midday. She was surprised to see that so much time had passed. She then took the opportunity to look around and see if she could locate the Chūnin and tell them that she had completed their mission objective. They were no where to be seen, however, even along a large stretch of the perimeter and Sakura made the executive decision that she was too tired to hunt them down.</p><p>She made her way to the Mission Assignment Desk in an increasingly exhausted daze, as all the remaining adrenaline emptied from her system and the fatigue and pain from her recent injuries seemed more present. She barely noticed when the pathway in front of her was blocked by people, far too used to villagers treating her as if she was diseased. She blearily looked up to see Team 10 looking at her with startled bemusement. The lethargy slowed her response, and she was left leaning the bloody Tekkō-kagi against her shoulder and blinking at them blankly for several long moments, not even bothering to try and interpret their varying expressions.</p><p>It dimly registered that Ino was there, and that her presence hurt, but she was the furthest away from her, and that somehow helped.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Sakura eventually stated, and made to move around the small group of people opposite Ino.</p><p>Their sensei, Sarutobi Asuma if she remembered correctly, moved to stand in front of her again. “Alright there?”</p><p>Sakura’s head tilted as her brain struggled to understand the inquiry. She followed the man’s gaze and quickly evaluated her appearance; there was quite a bit of blood. Some of the wet patches soaked into her many bandages was closer to a pale yellow (definitely bug juice, Inner commented with a disgusted sneer), but she was mostly covered in blood. Both from her injuries (recent and reopened former wounds, the nurse was likely going to yell at her again) and from her retaliation against the tiger. Breathing through cloth that was also likely stained in red, Sakura could see why her appearance would be suspect.</p><p>She hurried to explain herself.</p><p>“I just finished a mission retrieving an item from the Forty-Fourth Training Ground.” She stopped to wipe her hand on the hem of her clothes, attempting to make it even a bit less disgusting, then grabbed the mission scroll from her bag. “Here.”</p><p>The tall man quickly read through the scroll and nodded to himself. Then he looked back at her, his head tilted almost playfully. “A Tekkō-kagi?”</p><p>Sakura gave him an embarrassed smile. “My fingernails kept breaking,” she joked weakly.</p><p>“Ah,” he hummed in consideration. And the silence stretched.</p><p>She started to feel awkward and couldn’t help the anxious glance at her former classmates, her fingers curling nervously. She would rather avoid an exchange, she decided, not particularly interested in their comments about the recent changes taking place in her life. “Excuse me,” she stated again, darting away.</p><p>-</p><p>Asuma stared in bemusement as the heavily bandaged girl in front of him scurried away, only recognizable due to her pink hair. It was very disconcerting, he decided. To see the blood blossoming across that makeshift mask, the casual way she held the sharply bladed weapon in front of her in a village full of civilians (why hadn’t she put it away?), and the anxious way she kept shifting her feet and clenching her hands, as if preparing to bolt or attack at the slightest notice, despite the obvious fatigue. The way her too skinny limbs made her joints pop out almost unnaturally.</p><p>He had heard, of course, of the girl’s recent tragedy. And he knew PTSD could explain some of it. The restlessness, the agitation, the apparent insomnia and lack of appetite.</p><p>But the girl had also been covered in injuries.</p><p>Asuma stopped to look at his kids, curious about their reactions, and was rather taken aback by the force of their response. Choji had stopped eating a chip midway and had yet to finish the bite, which meant he was obviously greatly disturbed. Ino looked stressed and unhappy, and had actually wrapped her arms around her torso while biting on her lip, which was a very unusual display of vulnerability for the brash, extroverted girl. And Shikamaru-</p><p>“She’s going to die,” Shikamaru had bluntly stated this as if it was a foregone conclusion, still peering off in the direction the pinkette left.</p><p>“Shut up, Shika-kun,” Ino muttered under her breath, but if the way she tightened her arms was any indication, she probably agreed.</p><p>The problem was, Asuma agreed too. Without intervention, it was clear the girl was heading towards an early grave.</p><p>So, where the fuck was her genin instructor?</p><p>“Kids? Go train or something, I’ll see you tomorrow.” They turned to collectively stare at him, obviously concerned, but he waved them off and started hunting.</p><p>For as lackadaisical as his friend pretended to be, Kakashi was obsessive compulsive and thus largely a creature of habit. If he wasn’t away on a mission (and Asuma had reason to believe he wasn’t), he was usually lingering in about a half a dozen places within the village. Asuma perused each one until he came across the elusive fucker serenely stretched out on a food booth.</p><p>He slumped next to him and ordered something small, despite the fact that he had just finished a large meal with his team. He waited several minutes, reveling in the way his presence seemed to make the white-haired Jōnin stiffen ever so slightly. And then he waited just a moment longer, long enough for Kakashi’s food to be made and delivered in front of the man.</p><p>Then he pounced. When the man was the least likely to leave.</p><p>“She’s going to die, you know,” he stated lightly, absentmindedly twirling chopsticks.</p><p>“Hm? Who is that?” Kakashi asked blandly, staring somewhat forlornly at the delivered food, as if the grilled bits of eggplant had betrayed him somehow.</p><p>“Your pink-haired genin.”</p><p>Kakashi’s entire body tensed, and his breathing grew shallow. If Asuma hadn’t known that something was wrong before, he did now. It was unlike the man to be so painfully obvious.</p><p>“I just ran into her on the road, you know. She was covered from head to toe in bleeding bandages. And carrying a Tekkō-kagi on her shoulder, in the middle of the fucking marketplace.”</p><p>There was a long pause. And then- “Maa, that doesn’t sound like Sakura-chan. You must have confused her with some other pink-haired girl.”</p><p>“Know many, do you?”</p><p>Kakashi blithely ignored his jab, poking at his food.</p><p>The silence eventually got to him. “What the fuck are you doing, Kakashi?”</p><p>The infuriating man refused to look at him. “Trying to eat?”</p><p>Asuma was not to be dissuaded. “Why won’t you just train her?”</p><p>Kakashi sighed, but refused to answer.</p><p>Now, Asuma was a patient person in general, but even he could admit to being frustrated at the man’s obtuse obstinacy. It made him a bit sarcastic. “But of course, I forgot, you’re too busy trying to kill yourself with ANBU missions for some misplaced guilt about the Uchiha kid.” Asuma didn’t bother waiting for a response, digging into his recently delivered chilled dessert with a series of irritated jabs.</p><p>Twenty minutes passed as Kakashi chewed his meal, eating around his mask while Asuma made a mess of his dessert. When the guy finally started speaking, Asuma almost missed it, not expecting the circumspect man to admit to having <em>actual</em> <em>feelings</em>. “She’s better off without me.”</p><p>“Bullshit.”</p><p>Kakashi just looked at him, and the vulnerability in his gaze made something in Asuma’s chest tighten.</p><p>“You didn’t see her. She had almost as much of her face covered as you do, and the bandages were soaked red. I honestly don’t think she cares much for living at this point.”</p><p>It was at that point that Kakashi broke down. As much as he would allow himself in public, anyway. His expression shuttered, his fingers clenched the table in front of him, and Asuma could hear the man’s teeth grinding. And then he disappeared.</p><p>“Fuck." The expletive came out like a sigh. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Right, so... new idea. I'm going to add an additional POV to the end of various chapters, from the view point of different characters. All with the purpose of addressing Kakashi's actions and thought processes, but I decided that I wanted them to also express how other people were feeling about the situation in general. I hope you like?</p><p>For those of you that are keeping up with the story, I'm adding content to Chapter 8, a Kakashi POV, right after I finish uploading this. So feel free to check it out, reread the chapter, and let me know what you think.</p><p>Thank you all so much for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Stay</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It is little use to blame a dog for having fear. A dog has so many braveries that its few fears do not cancel them out.”</p><p>― <span class="authorOrTitle">Eric Knight, </span><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1065795">Lassie Come-Home</a></p><hr/><p>When Sakura tiredly shuffled back to the Mission Assignment Desk, her weapons stowed away and her bandages re-wrapped in the restroom, it was to see the two Chūnin from earlier already standing there.  She couldn’t tell if the flush of her face from her recent success was that easy to read, or perhaps the way her fist containing the ring clenched to her chest protectively, but one of the boys pointed at her and announced to the room, “There she is! She stole the ring from us and ran off, planning to take all of the money for herself.”</p><p>What?</p><p>The Jōnin at the desk gave them all a hard look. “I thought you were here to request an extension.”</p><p>“Well, yeah! We needed more time to get it back from her.”</p><p>The Jōnin sent them all a look that was extremely unamused. “You were assigned to fulfill this mission as a <em>team</em>.”</p><p>“She wasn’t interested. She pretty much told us she was only there for the money.”</p><p>Sakura felt the need to speak up for herself in defense. “You two said you weren’t willing to work with <em>me</em>! That my inclusion in this mission was an insult to you!”</p><p>“It was! But that was no reason to run off with what <em>we</em> rightfully found!”</p><p>Sakura let out a derisive sound in offended disbelief. “Oh yeah? Where did you pick if up then? Describe the area of the forest for me.”</p><p>The boy ignored her question, and looked around at the other shinobi in the room with an entreating expression. “Who are you going to believe? That this obviously injured pink-haired <em>Genin</em> somehow made it through the Forest of Death alone at night, or that the pair of us found the ring and she took off with it as soon as we were clear of the trees?”</p><p>The Jōnin at the desk rubbed her eyes tiredly, and bit off in irritation, “I don’t have time for this. Give me the ring. Each of you pick up an envelope for your pay.”</p><p>The boy protested, loudly. “What! You’re still going to pay her, although she stole from us? We deserve all of that money!”</p><p>The woman behind the desk gave the boy a hard look. “You were assigned this mission as a team. You’re going to get paid as a team. If you have a problem with that, take it up with your instructor. Now <em>leave</em>. There are other people here.”</p><p>“Unbelievable…”</p><p>Sakura nervously gave the woman the ring and grabbed an envelope after the boys had left. The woman stopped her before she could leave, forcefully smacking her hand down on the table and leaning close to Sakura’s face in anger and disdain. “A bit of advice? If you are assigned to fulfill an assignment with a team, you <em>stay with your fucking team</em>. If I ever find out that you left your team or tried to unfairly take credit again, I won’t assign you any more missions. Understand?”</p><p>Sakura could only nod, and scurried out of the office.</p><p>She already had unspoken restrictions on the missions she could accept. No missions and she would starve to death for sure.</p><p>She rubbed at her burning eyes in frustration, doing her best not to cry until she could get back to her apartment, only to find that those boys were waiting outside for her. They physically crowded her against the wall, using their larger physiques to pin her against the flaking paint. One of the boys, the one who had called her a Team-Killer and had made all those accusations, leaned in uncomfortably close. Then whispered aggressively, “If we ever hear you argue against what I said in there, we will come find you and make you <em>hurt.</em> Understand?”</p><p>Sakura stared into the hard faces of the older boys, wanting to feel braver than she did. She wished she had the strength to tell them off, fight them off if need be, and prove her innocence. But she didn’t know how to do any of that at the moment, so she simply nodded around shameful tears and watched as they scampered off.</p><p>It was like those brief moments of confidence she had found tearing colossal insects to shreds with blades had never existed.</p><p>Had she really improved so little since she was bullied as a little girl? Had she completely reverted into that pathetic coward, that had no confidence in herself and couldn’t protect herself from people that wanted to hurt her?</p><p>It made something in Sakura burn red hot. She wasn’t quite sure if it was shame, or humiliation, or anger. All she knew is that she was desperate to exert herself and prove that she was worth <em>something</em>. Convince herself that she didn’t deserve to be treated this way, that she was still a person. That she had the capacity to be better-because even the thought of <em>submitting</em> made something in her body clench furiously in contempt.</p><p>Sakura had no idea how she wound up at the Training Ground Team 7 had frequented, but she ran laps until her already fatigued muscles were screaming. She pulled kunai and shuriken out of her pouch around tingling fingers, and threw until tears filled her vision and made the exercise pointless. And then she kicked and punched at those fucking familiar red pillars, releasing loud cries of frustration between hits, until she couldn’t feel sensation in her limbs anymore. She wished the numbness would come back and radiate out to her feelings as well.</p><p>Six years at the Academy, and a full year as a Genin, and for what? What had she actually learned?</p><p>She eventually found herself on the ground in tears. She screamed into the ground again, frustrated at the fact that she kept crying. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to be weak. She didn’t want to be used. She didn’t want to hurt. She didn’t want to die.</p><p>She wasn’t strong enough.</p><p>Inner put up with her behavior for another few minutes, but then she interrupted. Loudly. Loud enough to make her head spin, effectively cutting through the negativity, because apparently idiots deserve pain.</p><p>So, what was she going to do about it? Wallow?</p><p>No, but she didn’t know how to get stronger. Not really. Not alone. At the Academy the physical part of her education relied heavily on the traditional shinobi sparring method, which necessitated the cooperation of teammates in order to hone reflexes and build endurance. Aside from perfecting kata, she didn’t really know how to improve alone.</p><p>Inner interrupted her again, before her thoughts could descend into melodramatic self-pity.</p><p>Strength training was important, which was easy to do alone. There was no point in sparring if the power behind her moves were weak and pathetic. Do that more.</p><p>Sakura felt oddly resentful at the thought. She had tried. Hard to build muscle when she didn’t have steady access to food, which was proving to be difficult despite her best efforts. And even then, strength training could only do so much.</p><p>Inner let out an exasperated sound, and gave it to her straight.</p><p>We are supposed to be intelligent, but lately you’ve been so wrapped up in your fucking <em>feelings</em> that you haven’t even attempted strategy. Instead you’ve been acting angry or helpless to hide insecurities, like a self-deluded little kid, while ignoring the more pressing issues. Like Danzō- why the fuck would she assume that ignoring that issue would make it go away? You need information. So what if you are scared? If you are so worried about getting found out, then find a discreet way to collect information. Find a discreet way to get stronger. Don’t let them all steamroll her into an early demise. Be a fucking kunoichi.</p><p>Sakura nearly cried in frustration. How?</p><p>Fucking pay attention. You want to be strong? Go find people in the village that are strong. Quietly watch and assess and consider how they got that way. If you need to learn how to better make money, how to turn public opinion, how to be stealthier, how to gain physical strength, find people who can do these things and discover how. Simply reading will not give her the answers of the universe, even if it did indulge in a healthy bit of escapism. So, she didn’t think she could risk getting an instructor involved? That was fine. Observe others good habits, and adopt the ones she thought might help her stay alive.</p><p>Sakura took a deep breath as she considered the sound advice, gratitude for Inner filling her. It wasn’t the first time, and she was sure it wouldn’t be the last. Finally, a plan she felt comfortable executing, that wasn’t plagued with anxious doubts and nervous anticipation, as it did not leave any room for rejection or negativity.</p><p>She left for home, barely able to walk. As soon as she arrived she forced herself into the shower, appreciating the bite of too-hot water on her aching muscles, and then stumbled into her pile of blankets without drying her hair.</p><p>Tomorrow would be different.</p><p>She would begin to craft herself into something pointy and dangerous, a weapon that others would be afraid to touch lest they bleed.</p><p>Sakura was asleep before her head hit the pillow.</p><hr/><p>It did not take long to track Sakura down, not with Kakashi’s prolific nose. After Asuma’s assertion that she was practically falling to pieces, Kakashi needed to see for himself what her mental state was. He needed to verify that she was okay, that Asuma was somehow mistaken. Surely Sakura would be reading, or innocently training, or some other exercise that demonstrated she was mentally fit.</p><p>But the Sakura of recent times apparently lived to upset his expectations.</p><p>Surprisingly, she was at Team 7’s traditional training ground, a place she had recently been avoiding. At first glance all was well, she was simply practicing with projectiles. The closer he got, however, the more the terrible truth of the situation revealed itself.</p><p>She was fairly covered with blood. That part Asuma had nailed. From the makeshift bandages stretched across half of her face, hiding all of her features except for her eyes, to the abrasive bandages covered her calves, to the clearly reopened injuries on her arms. The smell of coppery metal was strong, and filled his nose distastefully.</p><p>She was <em>not</em> openly carrying a hidden weapon, which was a good sign. However, everything about her body language screamed that she was not okay. Her limbs shook from exhaustion, the kind you rarely saw from simple exercise. Her hands trembled between throws, perhaps from fatigue or anxiety. She flung the pieces of metal aggressively, putting way too much of her body into the throw.</p><p>Needlessness to say, her aim was off. It was not until he was closer that he realized she was blinking around tears.</p><p>The Sakura of old would never have pushed her body to the point of exhaustion, lacking the motivation to push her physicality. She never would have needlessly sacrificed form when practicing- her inclination towards meticulousness and perfectionism was one of Kakashi’s favorite things about her. And she would not have bothered attempting to train while she was in such a state, understanding that it did little good for her body to train beyond a certain point and to do more would be detrimental to her recovery.</p><p>This Sakura was not that Sakura.</p><p>He wasn’t quite sure what had happened to her intelligence. Or perhaps it was a lack of resilience that was the issue- growing up with so little trauma had made it impossible for her to adjust to suffering and maintain a healthy mental state. Not that he had any right to criticize someone there… but logic had always been a driving force behind his actions, even when he was in pain. He had never gone this far simply training in the village.</p><p>Kakashi observed with a kind of horrified bemusement as her training devolved into kicking and punching the posts recklessly and violently, screaming in frustration between hits.</p><p>This was not constructive training, by any means. It was entirely destructive. Sakura was hurting herself, punishing herself, for kami only knows what reason, and her body was breaking as a result. Kakashi stood there watching with a frown as her bandages literally broke open, and blood actively flowed down her limbs, and wondered why Sakura wasn’t stopping. He wondered when she had stopped feeling physical pain.</p><p>She eventually wound up on the ground, screaming around tears.</p><p>Asuma was right. It fucking hurt to admit it, but he was right. She was not okay, not at all, and was clearly not taking care of herself. She was even skinnier than the last time he saw her, to the point where her joints stuck out awkwardly and the little bit of baby fat in her cheeks was disappearing prematurely.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>It hurt. Watching her fall to pieces. Kakashi clenched his fists together tightly in an effort to control his own anxious tremors.</p><p>It called out to that protective instinct he had been trying so hard to push away, to be there for her, take care of her, protect her. Did he really want the last member of his team to die so senselessly?</p><p>And then he watched curiously as she sat up, an oddly calculating look on her face. Gone was the turmoil of emotion and shaking nerves- in its place a kind of resolute determination came over her features, and Kakashi feared the worse, Asuma’s fucking voice rattling in his head. <em>I honestly don’t think she cares much for living at this point.</em></p><p>It encouraged him to follow her back to her apartment, a crumbling shithole somehow in worse shape than his own apartment complex. It encouraged him to perch on a tree branch outside the window, resisting the urge to break through the glass and force her out of the bathroom when she started the shower, needing to physically see her so he had enough time to intervene in case she decided to do something stupidly suicidal. And then he watched her tired, wet, barely dressed body fall asleep wrapped in his blanket.</p><p>His eyes took in the sparse room clinically. She had literally nothing to her name. Her existence was empty aside from a pile of blankets, some candles, and a surprisingly large collection of library books and scrolls she had neatly organized up against one empty wall. Curiosity propelled him forward, and before he knew it, he was inside the apartment critically examining an empty closet, an empty fridge, and a bathroom just as bare aside from a solitary bottle of shampoo and half a roll of toilet paper.</p><p>She clearly needed help.</p><p>He was on his way to speak with the Hokage about getting put in charge of her when he noticed a few scraps of paper on the counter. A quick glance showed that they detailed plans for the future, and he shuffled through them idly, looking for any information that might confirm his suspicions of suicidal ideation. His thought processes were stopped by a page containing a list labeled, “Potential Instructors”. The list outlined about a dozen names, and half of them were crossed off.</p><p>Kakashi left when he realized his name wasn’t even on the list.</p><p>He was called away for a mission in the middle of the night, and the idle thoughts he had entertained shadowing her the next day on a kind of unofficial suicide watch died as he was stationed outside Shimogo. And in the following nights away from the village, embracing the pain of the nighttime chill with familiar masochism as he stood watch, Kakashi came to embrace the reality of her rejection.</p><p>She didn’t want him. He was too late.</p><p>He would step aside if that is what she desired. He would do his best to connect her with some resources when he returned, though, to give her enough direction and purpose that suicide was no longer considered an option. He just had to pray that she didn't do anything irreversible before he returned.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Watch</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”</p><p>– Winston Churchill.</p><hr/><p>It was only due to Sakura’s heightened state of awareness that she was able to pinpoint the Genjustu. She had arrived at Kata-san’s house feeling driven and determined to be as alert and perceptive as possible, as the girl could scarcely think of a better person to pick good habits from than a retired elite shinobi. As it was, the illusion itself was not terrible or obvious, which somehow felt all the more insidious- it was an emotion of contentment that grew the longer Sakura stood in front of the door, and oh, how she wanted to bask in it and release the anxiety…</p><p>But Sakura didn’t trust it, didn’t deserve it, so it was easy to tangle her fingers into the release sign. “Kai.”</p><p>She knocked on the door, and the much older woman answered it with a knowing look burrowed underneath the wizened skin. “Very good. In.”</p><p>Over the next few hours Sakura found herself a victim to a barrage of genjutsu attacks as she attempted to complete the familiar cleaning regiment. Some were so subtle she had to rely on her memory of past visits in order to identify the smallest of differences; a picture frame just a bit out of place, the lining of a book that was teal instead of maroon, the disappearance of a stubborn cobweb in the corner that Sakura was forbidden to touch, the presence of an unfamiliar smell. Other attacks were vicious and obvious, which created monstrous shapes and horrific shadows that emerged from the darkened corners dripping with bloodlust. The most terrible allowed her worst fears to play out in front of her; the village destroyed and her old teammates from Team 7 dead at her feet due to her own lack of ability.</p><p>The image of Kakashi’s body shredded and bisected, the blood leaking out to saturate his white head of hair and stain a familiar orange book, was especially damning. Sakura was forced, once again, to admit that things were different since the Uchiha’s defection- where the young boy had once represented a conglomeration of her hopes and dreams within the village, her subconscious now considered his death somewhat of an inevitability, and thus it wasn’t as shocking. But Kakashi, who had always been a living testament of the strength and commitment of Konoha, seemed infallible for some reason.</p><p>She could scarcely imagine a world in which he was rattled, much less defeated. It scared her, this image, and made her want to search for him in the village, if only so she could reassure to herself that he was (as always) utterly unflappable.</p><p>Other genjutsu were aimed at disrupting her internal chakra patterns by playing off her fragile emotional state; subtly increasing her anxiety until she was a breadth away from a panic attack, generating anger that bubbled up from the desperate, rotting, putrid hole in her chest which demanded action to right her injustices, sorrow so great she couldn’t help but cry as she cleaned.</p><p>It was incredibly draining, remaining so aware of her surroundings <em>and</em> her emotional state. Constantly engaging in the paranoia, and Sakura realized for the first time how truly complacent she had really become since coming back to the village. It also required far more chakra than she would have expected to release all of the illustions, and by the end of her visit, Sakura was shaking slightly.</p><p>The infernal old woman was grinning. “You have potential, girl, I’ll give you that.”</p><p>“Why was this necessary?” Sakura couldn’t help but ask, clenching her fingers into fists in a poor attempt to still them.</p><p>“I wanted to see if you were worth my time.”</p><p>Sakura gave the woman a hard look. “I’m here to clean your house.”</p><p>The woman shrugged, her smile a bit mad. “I set high standards about who I let through my door.”</p><p>Then she was ushered off with a handful of sticky dango, and Sakura was forced to contend with the unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation of mild chakra exhaustion. That didn’t prevent her from traveling the village to people-watch, however. For the rest of the day she settled uncomfortably into trees and bushes and did her best to conceal her chakra as she observed her fellow shinobi. Oddly, it helped that she barely had any left.</p><p>And she slowly discovered things that she had never bothered to notice before.</p><p>Lee wore extensive weights tied to his wrists and ankles, which is how he was able to increase the productivity of his workouts. His speed training in particular also formed a noticeable pattern; sprinting took place in regular intervals, where the boy would break from his casual jog (Sakura was sure she wouldn’t even be able to sprint that quickly) and bound forward in a calculated burst of energy. His form was meticulously clean, carefully landing on his forefoot and pushing off with his toes, his arms bent at 90 degrees to forward momentum. It was all much more precise than she would have expected considering his flamboyant personality.</p><p>Tenten always wore gloves and carefully bandaged her forearms before handling weapons. Then she familiarized herself with small movements before leading up to larger ones, practicing wrist snaps and elbow extensions repeatedly before she even bothered to pick up pieces of steel. Her stance was also much different than a traditional ninjutsu fighter, closer to the ground and more agile, which seemed to require a surprising degree of flexibility. She seemed to achieve this by stretching extensively at the beginning of her workouts, for easily twice the amount of the time that Sakura typically bothered.</p><p>Akamaru, Kiba’s nindog, had a much more active role in Team 8’s fighting style than she would have expected. In the classroom she could distinctly remember the boy taking care of the small puppy with a gentleness that at the time seemed strange considering his brash demeanor. The tiny nin-dog had not been actively included in spars, however, and served much more as a simple animal companion. Upon observation (and she was fairly confident that Kiba and Akamaru both noticed her crouching in the bushes, by smell if the boy’s flared nostrils said anything as he shot her a glance) Sakura found that a grown Akamaru was integral in providing a combative, proactive response to threats, a first line of action to protect the far more defensive Hinata and Shino. Sakura wondered if Kakashi’s nindogs could be used similarly, or if this team formation was specific to Inuzuka.</p><p>Her thoughts drifted as she considered the intelligent animal and longed for that trust, that security and camaraderie. Was it even possible to use animal summons so extensively? Often enough to develop that level of companionship, with an unshakeable rapport and established combination attacks?</p><p>The Aburame seemed to be the most elusive individuals in the village, somehow perfectly embodying the idealistic shinobi- quiet, unobtrusive, and perfectly collected, but also aware and extremely perceptive. They always instantly caught on to her amateur attempts at subterfuge, and Sakura forced her body to still instead of shake with nerves as they carefully evaluated her through the tree leaves. She was ultimately discredited as nothing but a small curiosity, if the way they eventually ignored her was any indication, and Sakura was allowed to take note the small ways they communicated with each other and the world around them. She had never truly considered how difficult it must be to exchange body language cues when most of their face and body was covered in cloth, but they somehow managed to exchange a wealth of information in the subtlest of ways- slight head tilts, and twitching fingers, and rising laugh lines.</p><p>There was also a power in their shared silence that Sakura had always been too loud to properly appreciate. It subtly redirected attention away from them and encourage introspective reticence in turn. It was powerful in its simplicity and effectiveness.</p><p>Sakura was also fortunate enough to accidentally crash a training session by their new Hokage when she attempted to people-watch the next day. She was still ashamed enough by the rejection that she didn’t stay for longer than a minute, but she couldn’t help but take an interest in the ways the older woman’s hands glimmered with chakra right before a devastating punch. Sakura tried to rationalize the technique as she slunk away from the bushes, knowing that she had attempted her own sloppy, careless version during her last mission outside the village. Sakura had channeled far too much chakra into her hits, and didn’t have the practice to control the backlash, which had eventually fried her pathways. If she was able to control the amount and redirect the backlash however…</p><p>It bore consideration.</p><p>Her meandering was eventually interrupted unexpectedly by one of her former classmates.</p><p>“Hello Sakura-san,” Choji interjected shyly in front of her.</p><p>Sakura couldn’t help but consider him with a frown, trying to understand why he had blocked her path with such determination. “Choji-san,” she stated dryly, unsurprised to see a grouchy Shikamaru lurking in the background.</p><p>“Would you like to have some tea with us?” the soft-spoken boy suggested, and Sakura was immediately discomforted, not only from the unusualness of this request but also by the possibility of Ino’s inclusion.</p><p>Her rejection was interrupted before she could even begin to speak. “Ino won’t be coming,” Shikamaru quietly asserted from the background. “And in case you didn’t realize, this is not exactly a request.”</p><p>Choji shot the boy a frown, and then looked up at Sakura with strangely pleading eyes. “Please Sakura-san.”</p><p>Sakura nodded, despite disliking the attempted manipulation, feeling it would be less hassle if she just got it over with. She eventually found herself being carefully ushered into an aged teahouse with traditional sliding doors that smelled oddly of plum and wet wood.</p><p>They all sat down together at a table low enough to be a kotatsu, and Sakura knelt somewhat uncomfortably, her bruised knees aching despite the soft cushion underneath them. She pridefully made an effort to straighten her spine, wanting to feel strong and capable of handling their inquiries. Choji followed her example, his large form carefully erect as he considered her through warm brown eyes. Shikamaru ignored any attempt at etiquette, sprawling out on the cushion haphazardly beside his teammate as he purposely gazed outside, through one of the open sliding doors.</p><p>Sakura understood immediately. This intervention was Choji’s idea, and therefore he would be taking point. Shikamaru was there for back-up, should he be needed, but this was not his show. It seemed apropos of everything that Sakura knew of the Nara, individuals who avoided direct confrontations and preferred to work unobtrusively from the shadows.</p><p>Silence reigned for several minutes. Sakura refused to say anything, and Choji appeared too invested in looking over the restaurant’s menu to bother with empty platitudes. Shikamaru zoned out completely, as was his habit. The uncomfortable stillness was only broken when a woman came to take their order, bowing profusely as she considered the Akimichi clan heir, and the boy comfortably rattled off what seemed to be half the menu.</p><p>The woman left with another nervous bow and Choji gave Sakura a kind smile. “I ordered some food for you, in exchange for taking up some of your time. I hope you don’t mind.”</p><p>Sakura felt needled. She understood that this was pity, behind those pretty words, and she did not care for it. Her smile in return was strained. “Why did you invite me out? Six years together at the Academy, and this is the first time you instigated a meeting.”</p><p>Her question went unasked. What changed?</p><p>The boy gave her a long look, and Sakura found herself carefully evaluated. “We are just concerned about a fellow shinobi and thought to touch base. How are you doing, Sakura-san?”</p><p>“Well enough,” she stated, resisting the urge to pick at the wooden grain of the table with her clipped nails. She made a point to maintain eye contact, hoping to bluff her way out of this conversation.</p><p>Shikamaru opened scoffed, the harsh noise echoing slightly in the enclosed space, but Sakura refused to look at him. Choji merely smiled. “That’s good. How has training been?”</p><p>Sakura didn’t answer. What could she say? How could she express all of the frustration in her heart, in this posh place she couldn’t possibly afford, to two boys who had never demonstrated that they cared about her as a person? She wanted to scream at them, like she had at the Memorial Stone. She wanted to screech out ‘What training, I don’t have a team’. She wanted to bellow, ‘Stop pretending to care just to assuage your suddenly guilty conscience’. She wanted to cry out, ‘I don’t need you, not anymore, I’m beyond your help’.</p><p>She wanted to whisper, 'Where were you two months ago?'</p><p>She ruthlessly squashed these thoughts, trying to bury the sadness far, far down.</p><p>It took several long moments. When she finally looked back up she found that Choji’s smile was sorrowful, and for some reason that made Sakura <em>so</em> <em>angry</em>. His voice eventually broke the hush of melancholy. “We just wanted to remind you that you still have people in the village you can trust to talk to and take care of you.”</p><p>‘After what happened to your team’ went unsaid. And Sakura couldn’t resist the urge to scowl. The bitterness welled up inside of her. Intellectually, she understood why she couldn’t take advantage of their offer; with Danzo sniffing around, she couldn’t possibly embroil anyone in her problems. But emotionally? There was so much resentment, she didn’t have the wherewithal to rationalize her response. The ugliness of the disdain seemed to drip through her veins like a poison, and her mouth opened without her realizing it. “It’s too late for that.”</p><p>Choji was still sad. Shikamaru? Shikamaru was angry. His eyes flashed with a passion that Sakura had rarely seen from the boy, as he was suddenly leaning forward on the table as if attempting to encroach in on her space. “You’re still alive. So clearly, it’s not too late,” he bit off at her with his own scowl distorting his usually impassive face.</p><p>She glared. “You shouldn’t care.” Sakura looked back and forth between the two boys. “I am not your concern. I don’t even know why you bothered to invite me out. I am no one to you.”</p><p>Choji looked hurt, and Sakura wanted to throw something at his face. He wasn’t allowed to feel hurt. They were hardly close. This shouldn’t be about him at all.</p><p>Shikamaru looked ready to strangle her. “No one to us? We belong to the same village. We went to the Academy together for <em>six years</em>. I watched you…” he broke off with a harsh whisper, swallowing. He steadied himself, his gaze intense. “I watched you force yourself to eat everything from the bento’s Ino used to make, despite the fact that you don’t like spicy food, just to watch her smile. I watched you read more than any of our other classmates, not because you always wanted to be right in class, but because you genuinely enjoyed learning. You used to have that bookmark, the one with butterflies and gold trim that would rub off a bit on pages, and it was <em>so annoying</em> to see so many library books filled with gold dust, and… I watched you throw your friendship away and become some kind of moron because you thought the stupid Uchiha was pretty, which made Ino cry <em>all the damned time</em>…”</p><p>Sakura felt a bit broken as he kept listing things, and could feel her eyes burning with unshed tears. She did her best to blink them away and shot the boys a mulish expression. She did not want to think about Ino crying right now. She did not want to think about a Shikamaru that apparently cared enough to pay attention to what she did during their time at the Academy. She did not want to see the pity in Choji's round face. She was so tired of feeling guilty. "Stop it," she stated as clearly as she could.</p><p>Shikamaru's expression was tense. "You are not allowed to play the victim here, Sakura. You can't walk around like the sky is falling and pretend you are utterly alone when there are people here that care about you. It was perfectly within your power after the invasion to approach people, including Ino, who has been hurting too. But you didn't, you kept yourself isolated."</p><p>Her voice sounded wet, and she was horrified to feel tears leaking steadily against her will. "My team left me. What was I supposed to do?"</p><p>She felt the indignation cooling with her unbidden confession, quickly replaced with sorrow and anxiety. His ire seemed to similarly cool.</p><p>"There are other people in this village besides Naruto and the Uchiha."</p><p>There was a long, uncomfortable pause, before Sakura sniffed and self-consciously wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt. She felt drained and overwhelmed in equal measures, and eventually mumbled, “I didn’t mean to make Ino <em>cry</em>. I just wanted her to respect me.”</p><p>“You abandoned her,” His tone was softly defensive rather than accusatory, but she was vulnerable enough at the moment that it still felt like an attack.</p><p>Sakura’s arms came around her torso, as snug as she could get them. Trying to hold the pieces of her forcibly together. She couldn’t break, not right now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”</p><p>His gaze pierced into her. “It’s not too late to tell her yourself. It's not too late to accept help and escape the isolation. You still have time.”</p><p>She nodded numbly, “I know,” but then reality crashed down around her ears. Her life was not currently conducive for friendship. An empty apartment, blood still soaked into her blankets and the grout in the bathroom tile. A lack of free time, days she was forced to fill with multiple missions in an effort to afford just enough food to not die. A scroll filled with dead bodies that burned against her thigh and her conscience with its secrets… “Can you tell her?” Sakura asked a bit desperately. “It’s not safe, I can’t… tell her I’m sorry? And I miss her. And she’s the best kunoichi I’ve ever met, strong and beautiful, and I hope she is so happy in the future and…”</p><p>She was interrupted from her tirade as the doors in front of them opened, letting in a breeze and the sight of two elite shinobi. Sarutobi-san, (which made sense, considering Team 10, but some part of her psyche couldn’t help but condemn his appearance because she realized this was a trap…) and her erstwhile sensei. She stared at the white-haired man avidly, greedily taking everything in. She hadn’t seen him in months, after all, and she couldn’t help but remember the intense urge she had yesterday morning to hunt him down, and…</p><p>He was not what she had expected. Her Kakashi was unflappable, lackadaisical, forced humor and charm brandished as a shield to distract and reflect and prevent his real emotions from being too visible, but… this Kakashi had none of that. His exhaustion was written into every line of his body, his depression reflected back from the dead look in his eyes and the way his hair was too long and the bloody bandages peeking out underneath his regulation long-sleeved shirt, and… Sakura considered herself something of an expert in interpreting his masked face.</p><p>This man was not okay.</p><p>And he apparently didn’t want to spend any time around her. He seemed to examine her just as intensely for several long moments, his gaze taking in her tears and the way her fingers still trembled from chakra exhaustion even after a night of rest… his look hardened, and then he spun around and disappeared from the restaurant steps.</p><p>The rejection hurt. So bad. But she forced herself to rationalize his response. It was so hard to look at him and know that he was hurting. She couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling looking at her in all her bandaged glory. It made sense, she thought, that he didn’t want to look at how far she’s fallen, and didn’t want to think about their lost teammates, and…</p><p>The tears blurred her vision. She forced herself to stand. Her voice cracked despite herself. “Sarutobi-san? I would appreciate it if you didn’t force us to meet like this. Team 7, or its lack thereof, is none of your business.”</p><p>Then she forced herself to walk away.</p><p>Two hours later, Sakura heard a knock on her apartment door, where she found a verifiable mountain of take-out boxes on her steps. But no one was there. Sakura quickly noticed a note posted on the top.</p><p>
  <em>You’re so skinny, even Ino would be ashamed. For kami’s-sake, eat woman.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Shikamaru</em>
</p><p>Underneath that Choji had drawn and signed a lopsided smiley face.</p><p>And despite how irritated she wanted to be, Sakura smiled as she carefully placed the many boxes in her fridge.</p><hr/><p>Shikamaru walked away from the small, empty apartment with a frown. This was… not good. Not at all. Far worse than he could have expected.</p><p>He forced himself to stroll, despite his intense desire to rush home and lay beneath his favorite maple tree some distance from his family home. To close his eyes, take in the fragrant scent of azaleas and drift off into such sweet, ignorant oblivion. But this was important. He needed time to think. Sakura was very important to Ino, and Ino was important to him, ergo…</p><p>The rationalization was poor, and Shikamaru internally mocked himself. He was far more introspective than most, and had long understood the importance of being honest with himself. He knew peers that used dishonesty like a safeguard, hoping the lies they generated for themselves would protect them against some of the harsher realities in their village. It made them weak in a way, easily manipulated by people who paid enough attention to feed into these delusions, and Shikamaru had long determined that he would not so easily be led astray.</p><p>He is no one’s puppet.</p><p>Shikamaru forced himself to admit that he paid the girl far more attention than most. He had stared at the red bow neatly tied on the back of her pink head from the back of the classroom, in between naps during the earlier years at the Academy, reluctantly intrigued by the intelligent clanless girl who was as shy as Hinata one moment, and then sweetly assertive the next.</p><p>Her smile was so… happy. Pure, somehow. Bright.</p><p>His intrigue vanished the moment her obsession with the Uchiha disrupted her friendship with Ino. He can admit to being incredibly disappointed that the girl who had seemed so interesting was suddenly so… stupid. He still stared occasionally, but it was usually with a frown, failing to understand how such a bright girl could completely lose sight of herself.</p><p>Ino had defended her the one time he bothered to complain out loud, hoping to commiserate with Ino before tears made an appearance. It was aggravating, her loyalty to a girl so completely self-absorbed, and Shikamaru decided to completely forget the girl in a childish fit of pique.   </p><p>But that was then, and this was now. He clearly still cared, if the level of aggravation he could feel rolling around in his chest meant anything. And she was clearly important to his teammates. So something would need to be done.</p><p>It would not be easy.</p><p>Casually snooping through her bedroom window, Shikamaru was… disconcerted to see her living situation, absolutely. Empty, and bloody, and crumbling in dirty pieces, her apartment was more a hovel than a home. But far more concerning was the shinobi nonchalantly stationed around her apartment. A masked boy who appeared about their age was on a bench across the street, fluidly sketching into a scroll. It was the occasional glances in the girl’s direction, as if to verify her presence, and the awkwardly traditional way he sat (his spine ramrod straight despite how awkward that made the angle of his elbows, which demonstrated a poignant lack of nonchalance) that gave him away. He was a shinobi, if the tanto casually clipped to his waist meant anything, and he was spying on Sakura.</p><p>But he was not the only one. A few trees away Shikamaru found evidence of ANBU. He did not see an actual agent, of course, and the only reason he knew was because his father taught him to recognize signs of elite shinobi to better protect the sanctity of the Nara forest. ANBU used concentrated points of chakra to maintain balance, facilitate circulation, and cloak their presence, over hours at a time, which left a noticeable residue to those perceptive to it. Wrapped in the shadows of the early evening, Shikamaru found those residual points with a concentrated effort.</p><p>He had thought to look after Sakura’s comment earlier that day. About it not being safe to approach Ino. He was disappointed that his suspicions had been justified.</p><p>This was obviously more complicated than an absentee sensei and an unlucky, traumatized Genin. His personal concern for the girl notwithstanding, this would need to be approached with caution. Sakura was clearly in some kind of danger, if she was under such heavy surveillance.</p><p>He would have to wait to reconnect the two girls until he had more information and could make more informed decisions.</p><p>Perhaps team training in a few days could involve a bit of reconnaissance? Shikamaru wondered what he would need to say to get Asuma-sensei to agree. Surely it wouldn't be that difficult. Ino would be a bit more finicky to navigate, but he was the scion in a long family of strategists- surely he could come up with something.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'll be editing this chapter in the next couple of days, tweaking things... I just needed to publish it, to push forward, and indulge in perfectionism later. Please let me know if you have any recommendations for things I could do to provide clarity, or edits I might need to make. Thank you for your patience!</p><p>Also, to those that might be interested, I added an Ino POV to Chapter 3. It seems Sakura is going to be embroiled in Team 10 in the future, and I felt it important to explain her head space a bit moving forward. Please check that out if you're interested and let me know what you think.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Hunt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sakura investigates Danzō.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hounds follow those who feed them.”</p><p>- Otto von Bismarck</p><hr/><p>Sakura breathed in the dusty, stale air of the library with resolute determination. Today would be the day she got answers about Danzō and her assailants.</p><p>She carefully perused any relevant texts she could find, cautiously re-shelving every book or scroll as soon as she was finished skimming for information. Standing for so long made her still bruised knees ache and the soles of her feet burn, but Sakura wrote the pain off as necessary if she was ever to participate in surveillance missions and purposely attempted to build up a tolerance.</p><p>Unfortunately, the Genin section of the library proved to have little to add by way of historical texts, as those are typically shelved in the main section of the library that was accessible to anyone, which limited what she could uncover. The most incriminating thing she found was a single line in a dusty tome several decades old that stated the following, “<em>There are traditionally two primary organizations responsible for maintaining order within the village; the Konoha Military Police Force, founded by the Nidaime and run by the Uchiha clan, which deter petty crimes and monitor civilian criminal activity, and a special division of ANBU headed by Shimura Danzō, which are used by the Hokage to help maintain order among shinobi.</em>”</p><p>The passage went into no particular detail about these two entities, and began speculating on the prevalence of civilian crime in shinobi villages compared to civilian ones.</p><p>Sakura had certainly never heard of a secret division of ANBU, much less one whose primary purpose was to ensure shinobi in the village fell in line, and was afraid to consider the ramifications. Not only because it further insinuated that the attack on her team was sanctioned by the Hokage, a necessary ‘sacrifice’ of useless Genin to close the mouth of someone investigating the village’s corruption (which was, in itself, a startling example of callousness that Sakura and Inner both thought beneath Konoha). But because it demonstrated what little control she had.</p><p>Sakura had been brought up to be loyal to Konohagakure. The Academy in particular cemented this sentiment, as it actively encouraged attachment to the village, the creation of bonds, and a willingness for sacrifice. Her commitment was practically engrained, and Sakura was happy to do her part if it meant protecting her home and her friends. But if her village was really so quick to throw its people away like they were nothing but collateral (throwing her sentiment in her face), then it completely destabilized the root of her commitment. And there was nothing she could do about it. Any hint of anything but obedience, and she could be whisked away by T&amp;I or these ‘special’ ANBU to be similarly eliminated.</p><p>She numbly considered who else might have been disposed of.</p><p>It was within this train of thought that Sakura was able to piece together some of the context behind Takayuki’s rants. Or rather a terrible intuition that clicked his accusations into place. Perhaps- Sakura knew that Uchiha Itachi was a member of ANBU, celebrated as the youngest member of the organization ever, which lent to his notoriety. Perhaps ‘machinations behind the Uchiha massacre’ entailed a similar elimination, that Itachi was somehow a part of this secret ANBU division and given the responsibility of sacrificing rebelling members. The entire village had been keenly aware of the growing distrust against the clan before the massacre- Sakura may have been young at the time, but she distinctly remembers her mother purposely avoiding the clan members at the market, which she had been confused by. Maybe this treatment was enough to stir opposition.</p><p>But then why kill the entire clan?</p><p>Unless they were to act as props similar to the death of her recent teammates. And because the remaining members would have demanded an investigation, and no one was to know about Konoha’s rotting underside.</p><p>The thought made something bitter fill Sakura’s mouth as she turned her attention towards trying to find records of any missing children. Nerves made her fingers shake as she thoroughly inspected dusty records, and she struggled to keep her expression blasé. Unfortunately, she quickly realized that all records, including birth, death, and marriage certificates, were not to be found at the library as they were not accessible by the general public, which would require a later investigation. Furthermore, civilians and shinobi were legally restricted from posting anything that might hint at a disappearance, as such information could be used against the village and was thus to be handled by ‘the proper authorities’.</p><p>A scroll insinuated that this should have been the Police Force, and Sakura could find nothing to suggest that the third Hokage had bothered to replace their position in the village following the clan’s massacre. There was no longer a ‘proper authority’, as clans were left to police themselves and everyone else (the vulnerable, exploited <em>clanless</em>, Sakura empathized with biting resentment) fell through the cracks.</p><p>Easy to throw away. Easy to steal.</p><p>Sakura flew out of the library and towards the Training Ground to work off her nerves, hoping that these conclusions were merely a fit of paranoia and hastily drawn conclusions. Because how was she supposed to support a village that had <em>ordained</em> this level of genocide, against its own people?</p><p>Quickly going through strength training exercises, Sakura did push-ups as she determined her next steps. The cautious, frightened piece of her heart that would not stop pounding in her chest told her to go home. To dissuade suspicion, make herself some tea and read scrolls. Continue to be completely insignificant.</p><p>Inner dissented. She shouted out a call for action. Demanded that Sakura investigate and at least establish if Danzō currently had operatives that she could connect to her teammate’s murders. The Konoha Military Police Force had been disestablished, perhaps this secret ANBU group had too. Perhaps Sakura was getting ahead of herself, and this should be the first thing she confirmed.</p><p>Eventually Sakura decided that this would best be accomplished by casually observing the council members during their lunch outing for the day. These outings were something of an open village secret- no one talked about it, but everyone knew how particular restaurants actively competed for their business and subtly discouraged new customers midday in hopes of hosting. They should be relatively easy to spot, even from a distance.</p><p>Sakura finished her training session and headed towards the center of the village feeling grim and determined. Having a plan that potentially disproved these terrible suspicions settled her nerves. It was relatively simple, then, for Sakura to order some umeboshi onigiri and casually partake in her meal on a bench along the restaurant square.</p><p>It took several minutes for Sakura to see a small group of old, if stately individuals make their way down the thoroughfare. Danzō in particular was easy to pinpoint- the man was covered in just as many bandages as she was, and then further wrapped in swathes of fabric. From a single glance, Sakura understood how the man could dissuade suspicion; he played in the invalid card with great aplomb. While his chin was raised proudly, his steps were slow and appeared to take great effort, and his right arm was pined awkwardly to his chest in a way that suggested it was unusable.</p><p>Sakura knew not to get too close. She also understood her limitations as far as successful subterfuge was concerned, and determinedly remained in her seat as the group eventually picked a traditional noodle restaurant several meters away. Instead, she made a point to continue munching on the food, licking grains of sticky rice from her hand as she nonchalantly observed the area around the restaurant.</p><p>All she wanted to verify for now was that the masked men and women that had ambushed her were indeed Danzō’s men. That these operatives were still even in existence. <em>If</em> she verified their presence and appearance, she could attempt to go from there.</p><p>But she didn’t see anyone.</p><p>Sakura’s brows furrowed as she considered this. Danzō, the ailing man he was, would hardly leave himself unprotected in the middle of Konoha. If she was in his place, a person with a strong position of power and authority, who needed to maintain a visage of poor health, with potential trained assailants at his disposal - she would ensure that they were nearby in case of an attack, but hidden to remain secret. So, Sakura simply needed to figure out how closely they were stationed.</p><p>Finishing her small meal with a satisfied hum, happy to finally appease the hungry rumblings despite the anxiety of the situation, Sakura decided that she would have to lure operatives out into the open. She knew that she was not on a sufficient skill level to simply notice their presence, particularly if they wanted to keep hidden, but if there was an obvious threat that demanded their appearance, even in public... Such as causing a small explosion that would demand an immediate investigation. Sure, there was a chance that traditional ANBU agents would respond to the threat, but Sakura was betting on the fact that Danzo's operatives were closer.</p><p>All she needed was one glance.</p><p>So that night she made a point to order take-out from one of the local restaurants in the area. She took her time waiting for her meal, casually mingling in the square, hoping to dissuade anyone who might be following her. I am boring and not suspicious at all, she tried to project the thought with her body language, desperately trying to control her persistent anxiety. Then after she received her warm, packaged meal, she ran in the direction of the tree line along the most direct route to her apartment. She planted exploding tags amongst the leaves under the guise of removing her sandal and removing a small rock (standard issue, which would be impossible to trace back to her, far enough away from the building that it shouldn't cause needless destruction or damages). She made a point not to linger, and quickly made her way home.</p><p>She savored the delicious meal in the dark, not bothering to light the candles, using the sliver of moonlight from the window to direct her chopsticks. She didn't know why, exactly; after trying so hard to be purposely unobtrusive, it seemed somehow inappropriate to light the room. She found it rather relaxing in the dark, though. It felt safe.</p><p>The next day was very similar to the day before, except for the fact that it was a good fifteen degrees cooler. An unusual cold spell that necessitated slightly warmer clothing, but was not cold enough to discourage foot traffic in the lively restaurant district. Sakura thanked the gods in their infinite kindness for giving her an excuse to wear something a bit less revealing, as she was easily able to make the hand sign to signal the detonation of explosive tags inconspicuously between bites of onigiri underneath the additional fabric.</p><p>One glance, she reminded herself. One glance.</p><p>The explosion, as small and contained as it was, caused mass panic. And Sakura remembered, for the first time since she had conceived of her scheme the day before, that her village had recently experienced an invasion. That such explosions had spelt death mere months ago, and she had ruthlessly triggered such a visceral flashback simply to pursue a personal investigation that she would be unable to expose, even if her suspicions were proven true. The realization of the extent of her dispassion made Sakura feel disgusted with herself; she was supposed to be better. She had spent time mentally criticizing the overworked, indifferent hospital staff for their heartlessness, had spent time mentally disparaging the village leaders for callous decision making, believing herself to be above such things...</p><p>Sakura felt tainted, as if she had betrayed herself, as she sat there on the bench and watched a small group of masked individuals land in front of the restaurant that Danzo was eating at. They were wearing a black ensemble similar to the one that killed her teammates, but the confirmation of their existence did not have the same impact as her current personal shame. She quickly noted distinguishing characteristics- the tip-less tanto tied to their waist, the black midriff jacket with red straps along the shoulders, the white masks- just as she was swept along with the crowd quickly exiting the streets. She struggled with the overwhelming feelings, afraid, disappointed, <em>guilty</em>, as she made her way home in an edgy daze.</p><p>Sakura didn’t fully realize how jittery she was until she reached the apartment. She took hyperventilating breaths as she tried rationalize the guilt; they were fine, the villagers were fine, it was just a small explosion... one that shouldn't be connected to her. No, she wouldn't be hunted down by the secret ANBU whose primary purpose seemed to be keeping domestic shinobi <em>in line</em>... She clutched her hands to her side to prevent the shaking, needing to get herself under control… she stopped dead when she realized what was on her doorstep.</p><p>Sakura stared in confusion at the three books neatly stacked on top of her doorstep. She carefully looked around, trying to find any additional clues to answer necessary who and why questions. But there was no one around, and Sakura found herself investigating the titles curiously, trepidatious fingers still fluttering uselessly. An extremely old copy of <em>Uncovering the Secrets of the Tekkō-kagi</em>, the pages dusty and crumbling and the spine of the book coming apart in threaded pieces. <em>A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD</em>, which appeared to be dog-eared and tatty despite only being a decade old.</p><p>The third book did not have a title on the cover, and the second page merely stated, “Chakra Manipulation”. Glancing through the index, Sakura found a condensed list of several techniques that all required fine-tuned chakra manipulation. Rather than simply list Medical ninjutsu, which is the most that books about refined chakra control were willing to divulge at the Genin level, this tome listed and gave details on specific combat techniques, including the chakra scalpel, the Puppet Technique common of Suna-nin, the Gentle Fist technique used by the Hyuuga, as well as the medical procedures like the Delicate Illness Extraction Technique. The Mystical Palm Technique was included too, but in far more detail than she had ever read.</p><p>Sakura quickly made her way into her apartment and shuffled her anxious, thrumming body and these books into the bathroom (the only fully enclosed space within her small home). She desperately needed the illusion of security just then, still trying to control her breathing.</p><p>She looked at the books in more detail after she stopped hyperventilating, which was only accomplished through deep breaths and a splash of cool water against her face.</p><p>These… were not Genin books. A quick glance through the first book in her stack demonstrated as such; it went into incredible depth, avidly discussing the history of the weapon’s conception and use, before it introduced appropriate technique and tips on field maintenance.</p><p>A casual perusal of <em>A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD</em> displayed medical jargon, complex syntax, and critical dialogue. It was obviously a text created for adults, which attempted not only to illustrate coping methods for handling typical symptoms, but narrated how trauma impacts the brain on a neurological level. It included helpful information about healthy sleeping and eating habits that would diminish her symptoms, and methods to ground her in reality should she experience hallucinations or dissociative episodes.</p><p>Sakura gripped the texts as she sat on the closed toilet lid and wondered. Who had sent these? Was this something she could trust?</p><p>But there- a odd piece of paper stuck out like a bookmark from the back of the mysterious tome with no official title. Sakura pulled it out and saw a hastily drawn hehenonomoheji and that was it.</p><p>That terrible, desperate ache that suspiciously felt like hope suggested that this was Kakashi-sensei. The far more pessimistic part of her dismissed that as nothing but wishful thinking, that it was probably some note by a young Academy student that someone had just shoved in there… but in a book clearly written for adults?</p><p>Inner maintained that it didn’t matter. Regardless of the how, who, and why, Sakura now had very useful, very necessary resources that she should take advantage of. Because they now knew the truth. Sakura lived in a village that sacrificed an entire clan, one with an incredibly useful dōjutsu, to protect the status quo. Sakura, insignificant weak Sakura, would be thrown away in a heartbeat.</p><p>She needed to do her best to ensure that never happened.</p><p>In a fit of paranoid insecurity Sakura left the bathroom and threw together a pack of clothes and essentials, as a hastily thought out plan pieced together inside of her head. She needed to leave, however briefly, to make sense of her current predicament and read these texts away from prying eyes. She couldn’t leave the village, obviously, but every officially registered shinobi was allowed access to various training grounds. She would retreat to Training Grounds 44 later this evening, after she had finished her afternoon mission helping to rid a civilian home of an especially persistent badger. Perhaps she would camp out under one of those massive tree roots, hidden from monstrous insects and potentially suspecting shinobi alike.</p><p>Sakura tried to tell herself that she was okay. That she would be okay. It wasn’t enough to stop the tremors in her fingers, to loosen the tight tension in her chest, or disestablish the anxious nausea rolling in her stomach.</p><hr/><p>Danzō sat heavily at his desk, scowling, as he considered the operatives around him. He fought through lingering fatigue and the constant, biting pain in his right arm with stubborn familiarity. “How is it possible that none of you have any idea about who caused the explosion?”</p><p>One of his people stepped forward, Shinobi #2659, a man that Danzō generally found extremely competent at this kind of work. “The condensation from last night’s low temperatures soaked the explosive tags to the point where it is impossible to determine how long they have been buried. And the blurred Fūinjutsu marks on the saturated tags would explain why the explosion was larger than it should have been and could account for its sudden detonation. Unfortunately, aside from recognizing the tags as standard issue, these factors also make it difficult to trace.”</p><p>Danzō sighed, and mentally cursed the weather, which had also caused his joints and old injuries to ache unpleasantly. “Was anyone in the crowd behaving in a suspicious manner?”</p><p>The contingent of masked individuals before him all shook their heads in dissent. His scowl deepened. This was more than simply an aggravation; this was a premeditated assault, and it was imperative that they find answers in order to deter future attacks. “I expect you all to thoroughly search the surrounding area. And secure the results of the investigation by Tsunade’s ANBU to see if they noticed anything you have not. You are dismissed.”</p><p>The tone of his voice was harsh, and his unspoken expectations were written into every displeased line in his face promising his wrath should they fail. It had taken time to cultivate, the engrained fear, but it was necessary.</p><p>They left the room silently, and Danzō allowed himself a brief moment of privacy, relishing in the temporary solitude. A small reprieve, where he ran his hand through his hair several times in a self-soothing manner, an irritating habit he developed in the first war to help cope with the uncertainty, which he only indulged occasionally in the rare moments he had to himself.</p><p>After a few moments he ruthlessly cut himself from the comfort and began to strategize in his head, mentally listing potential culprits and how he could go about determining their culpability. He was interrupted by a specific series of knocks, and Danzō accepted Shinobi No. 4265 into his office with grim curiosity. “You have news?”</p><p>The boy nodded, and Danzō’s anticipation grew. He had long wondered about the circumstances surrounding the Haruno girl. Everything about the Shimomura assassination was suspicious. It should have been an incredibly straightforward assignment, even for the relatively unskilled operatives he assigned; kill the Team on route to Akada under the guise of bandits. Do not give away your identity as shinobi, leave no survivors. The Chūnin was easily the strongest member of their team, but his aptitude was primarily intellectual, and he had little actual combat experience. And the rest of his squad were untalented, clanless Genin without an official team that should have been easy to dispatch.</p><p>Instead, all of his Root members had disappeared and the Haruno girl had miraculously survived.</p><p>The only reason he didn't have her killed during her return to the village was because she had continued on to Akada to finish the mission (which strongly demonstrated that she had little awareness of Root’s involvement), because she was the person most likely to have information about his missing operatives, which would require she remain conscious, and because he had noted her as a potential piece to manipulate the Uchiha brat and the jinchūriki container. Her interaction with both teammates as they left the village insinuated attachment, and attachment was the easiest grounds for manipulation.</p><p>It hadn’t been enough to prevent her placement on this mission to begin with- Danzō strongly suspected that Orochimaru was doing his best to eliminate any emotional attachment the boy held for anyone, which would make her useless and not worthy of his protection- but it was enough to ensure that she wasn’t purposely sacrificed. Not without due cause.</p><p>Which entailed that she was thoroughly investigated, both to determine her flight risk (as she had been heard offering to leave for the Uchiha at the time of his departure, and had notably demonstrated a resistance in settling down since the invasion), and to determine her role in the Shimomura assassination. Although it had been several weeks and her changes in behavior could have been explained by recent trauma, his paranoia demanded indulgence, and Danzō had little cause to ignore his instincts.</p><p>Instincts that seemed to have paid off, once again.</p><p>“My target has been engaging in suspicious behavior,” Shinobi No. 4265 replied flatly, but even the monotone cadences couldn’t quite eliminate the boy’s naturally mellow intonations.</p><p>Danzō nodded, careful to keep his body still even as his mind whirled and his body wanted to pace. Another annoying habit he rid himself of decades ago. “Report.”</p><p>The pale boy promptly responded. “She has demonstrated an awareness of surveillance and a sudden disposition towards secrecy, as she hid in her bathroom with written material forbidden to her station and was seen leaving the library noticeably jittery without any books, a clear deviation from her typical behavior. The Nara heir has appeared a couple of times, once to investigate her apartment, potentially exchanging written communication, and once to follow her for almost an entire day.”</p><p>“Without speaking?”</p><p>Shinobi No. 4265 shook his head. “No, the Nara simply observed.”</p><p>Danzō nodded. That was, indeed, odd.</p><p>“Additionally, the girl has taken to closely observing members of the village. She watched you, in particular, while consuming her lunch for the past couple of days at the square.”</p><p>Danzō’s eyebrows rose as he considered that, and the potential implications. Could she, perhaps, have been responsible for the blasts? “Do you have any reason to think she might have been the cause of the explosion earlier today? How did she react to it?”</p><p>But the boy shook his head, and Danzō felt disappoint cool his ardor. “She appeared shocked at the explosions and made her way home with the crowd.”</p><p>“So why are you here?” There was a slight bite to his words. Most of the things the boy listed were subtly implicative at best, and a leery, poorly inductive gamble at worst.</p><p>“She was just seen packing all of her essential belongings. And she has not been assigned an overnight mission.”</p><p>Ah. It would appear their flight risk was on the move.</p><p>The easiest thing to do, of course, would be to let her leave. Let her become a missing-nin, and then get hunted down and eliminated by her own people. At her skill level, there is no way she would be able to survive, and his insistence that she be made to wear chakra restricting bracelets to reduce her threat level inside the village increased her vulnerability. But her survival in the Shimomura assassination was still unresolved, which niggled doubt in the back of his mind.</p><p>And while none of the observations the young shinobi before him had made were particularly striking, not even the consumption of written materials above her station (had she been in a clan, such a thing would have been expected), it was enough to prompt his suspicions. And the fact that <em>he</em> was the target of her observations recently made him feel oddly self-conscious in a way that he very much disliked.</p><p>Best to get rid of her now and eliminate her as a potential threat. It was also better to act proactively rather than reactively, and Danzō refused to be taken for a fool in the event that the girl was prevaricating.</p><p>“I’ve prepared a mission under just these circumstances. Ensure she remains in the village until everything is organized and she is officially assigned. Carefully notate everyone she communicates with.”</p><p>Shinobi No 4265 nodded, “Understood Danzō-sama”.</p><p>Then he vanished, not even a lingering sound or puff of smoke to demonstrate that he had been there in the first place. And Danzō couldn’t stop from running his fingers through his hair a few more times as he considered who might be available to help him with the mission. He needed members on her team that wouldn’t implicate him, members that were already antagonistic towards the girl, members that were likely to leave her behind in trying circumstances… perhaps his undercover operative that worked the Assignment Desk would have an idea.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hi! </p><p>So, really quick- I have been tweaking previous chapters. Notably, last chapter I decided that it was unlikely that Shikamaru knew about Root (certainly not enough to locate them by sight). He is a very intelligent and observant boy, but Danzo's entire thing is secrecy. I changed it so that he merely noticed that she was being watched by suspicious acting shinobi. I also added a bit to Kakashi's last POV- considered recent reviews, I believe I gave the impression that Kakashi ignored what he perceived of as Sakura's suicidal intentions because she rejected him. I changed it to make it clear that he was only not there because he was called away, and he still intended to help when he returned (even if it wasn't as her instructor).</p><p>Forgive me as I continue to tweak things in order to connect chapters more cohesively. I will likely edit and tweak this chapter as well. I apologize if these changes make it aggravating to read or keep up on changes, but this has mostly occurred as a response to feedback you are all lovely enough to leave me. I just want this story to be the best it can be.</p><p>Also, please let me know if you think her sudden realization about the truth of the massacre sounds realistic. I tried to make this awareness happen as organically as possible- she was already aware that Danzo was somehow involved with the massacre because of her team leader, she knew that factions within the village killed dissenters from personal experience, and she discovered that the person cited for being responsible for the massacre was potentially a member of such a faction, as she was finally able to connect Danzo with ANBU operations... please let me know if this sounds like a realistic connection.</p><p>What do you think about pace so far?</p><p>Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello all! Thank you for reading. This little plot bunny would not leave my head, and practically ate away my last week... Please let me know if you think the story has promise, or if you notice any way that the writing can be improved. I've never had a beta, but I always appreciate any kind of constructive criticism.</p><p>As a side note, please know that I am actively working on my other stories and should have updates on most in the next few weeks. I hope you all manage to stay safe.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>